


narrow the gap between us

by waspishly



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Explicit Sexual Content, Johnny is a beefcake now and this is how I deal with it, M/M, Slice of Life, Strength Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:47:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23304151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waspishly/pseuds/waspishly
Summary: It’s easy for Johnny to care about Donghyuck, Jungwoo, or any other member, and to tease them playfully. It’s easy for him to make Mark laugh hard enough to double in on himself.It’s not easy being in love with one of his closest friends. Especially if you know exactly what they sound like when you bite that one spot on their neck.
Relationships: Lee Taeyong/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 61
Kudos: 608





	narrow the gap between us

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a quick 5k thing about Johnny being a beefcake and Taeyong having a muscle kink but here we are! Ten days of self-isolation and 30k words later. This was lit just a vent for how good Johnny looks this comeback, dont expect deep and accurate state-of-mind analysis's here ;-;
> 
> Quick disclaimers:  
> \- inebriated, and unprotected sex! This is a fic. practice safe sex irl please  
> \- yuta calls taeyong a whore once, in a joke between friends  
> \- that one line with the tuna sandwich. I regret writing it. You’ll know when you get there
> 
> Title is from neo zone’s best track. Anyways, first nct fic lets beat it fellas

  
_Nine people, please._

That’s what Taeil says as they’re booking the table, and Johnny’s chest gets all happy just at that.  
Jesus, he’s a sappy bloke. He just can’t help that he just loves it when they get all members together after some time. It’s always that circle of feelings: when they’re apart he misses them to shreds, and when they’re put in one place for longer than a week he’s barely suppressing the urge to at least strangle one member.

They had seen Mark and Taeyong here and there, for a handful of music shows, but never for more than a few hours, before their managers had shipped them away to the next overseas SuperM schedule, the two of them taking flights like it were casual walks from the company to the convenience store.  
There had been little time to enjoy even a small gathering, so they’d fastened a big get-together when the SuperM’s world tour was finished.

They file into the room of the restaurant. That’s the perk of this particular place- that they always get a room ready for them in less than 20 minutes, no matter how many members they bring.

Donghyuck already makes it clear that he wants to sit next to Taeil, and pushes Jungwoo to the other side of the low table for it.  
A waitress takes their orders of beer and dishes, already struggling as Jaehyun and Doyoung disagree on what to eat by the third dish named. As soon as the waitress leaves there’s the debate on who’s gonna pay, because Donghyuck ordered giant crabs even though they agreed not to eat seafood. Having Donghyuck pay is out of the question, and the little fuck knows it exactly, because he’s got a smug smile on his face as Jaehyun and Doyoung squabble.   
Johnny doesn’t interfere with Donghyuck, nevertheless the money that’ll be spent, he knows that both and Mark and Taeyong love braised crabs, and it’s not something they can usually eat.

“Idiots,” Jungwoo mutters, whispering loudly for the two of them to hear it, and that makes Taeil laugh.

Doyoung and Jaehyun are also the last ones to notice their long-awaited dearly-missed and feverishly-successful members entering their room.

Mark yodels something upon entering, but it gets lost in the commotion of greetings.

“Mo-om, I’m on Ellen!” Donghyuck yells, upon Taeyong and Mark entering the room, Yuta and Jungwoo enter the jab, catching on quickly.

Taeyong laughs, loudly, that hacking bird-ish soak up of air laughter he does, already embarrassed but happy, and Johnny’s chest gets a little warm. Immediately, the members get up and crowd around the two of them.

Johnny wants to hug Taeyong next, but when Taeyong spots Jungwoo, his eyes go wide and his cheeks apple up, and Jungwoo gets hugged for 20 seconds. Johnny feels just a tad of disappointment, but his empathy is definitely more morally aware, as he just lets Jungwoo be hugged and his face put between two hands, and then ruffled through his hair.

A waiter tries to enter the room, but since there’s two handfuls of people standing around the entry area, it’s impossible for the boy to barely get a step inside. Johnny catches anxiety pull on the features of his face, and sensing an opportunity, he signals to take the tray. Somehow, he’s thankful to be tasked with something, because it gives him a reason to sit back down again and busy himself without standing around awkwardly, waiting for Taeyong to give him the time of the day.

He assumes he’ll be tasked with frying the meat, also because he’s got nothing against it, and he’s happy with the task. He doesn’t mind. He assorts the various meats around the grill as the members begin sitting down. Taeyong sits down a little to the left across from Johnny, next to Doyoung. Their eyes catch, and Taeyong smiles warmly, eyes squeezing a little tighter, waving his fingers. Johnny smiles back, a little bit relieved that there’s no awkwardness. It’s not like he hopes for it, it’s just always the fear that this time being apart, something will have changed, over that Taeyong’s’ probably finally come to his senses.

As if on instinct, Taeyong reaches for the tongs to begin roasting the meat, but Johnny reaches for them first. He pushes Taeyong’s hand away back down, shaking his head slightly. “You gotta do the talking,” he explains. 

They’re _fine-_ normal, just like every other day. But a sense of nervousness is still tightening Johnny’s throat.

Taeyong seems a little caught up for a second, perhaps thinking of protesting, but then Yuta asks if Taeyong bought that Supreme belt he wanted, and Taeyong’s distracted before the second is over.

Donghyuck asks for the belly-slices to be fried first, so Johnny diligently starts pulling them across the heated surface as the other start casual conversation, mostly about the SuperM-hyungs. When done, he looks up the table to the other end, where Donghyuck sits, gesturing to the meat like he needs approval. The youngest one gives him a thumbs up.

The crab stew arrives halfway through Mark’s rundown of their stage accidents, and almost everyone falls over it like a cluster of locusts, trying to get the main-body shells of the crabs.   
Another round of beer is served shortly after they finish up the first bowls of meat— when it’s best, when you’re not as hungry anymore, but the tastes are meaty and salty.   
During downtimes of grilling meat, Johnny takes the indulgent freedom to look at Taeyong. His brain feels a little thirsty for the usual familiar sight of Taeyong, now missing for some time. He soaks that up, the sight of a a laughing Taeyong, glued to Doyoung side, talking incessantly about things he experienced.

Happy; but with bags under his eyes and his cheeks lacking the usual fullness. In no way it makes him unsightly, but there’s fatigue written even in the line of his shoulders. The lack of fat makes his face even more striking, the cut from his cheekbones to his jawline even sharper, and Johnny can see why the stylists encouraged Taeyong to keep it like that. Now that he’s here planned for some indefinite time, Johnny can make sure Taeyong and Mark will put on the necessary weight again to be healthy.  
Despite the visible tiredness, though, he seems joyful, brabbling about and about, bouncing off of Mark and continuing each other’s sentences.

He seems happy, really. And something in Johnny’s chest twinges, that the happiest he’s seen Taeyong is after being apart for weeks.

They texted, but not much as they usually did. That meant little in terms of missing Taeyong, though. Johnny couldn’t imagine how exhausted he himself would be in Taeyong’s shoes, or Mark’s; but he comforted himself with that at least he knew they were in good hands with the older members. It could only do good to forge some strong friendships across groups.  
That’s what he told himself, but he _really_ missed Taeyong. 

“— and then Baekhyun-hyung fell asleep on the same bed as me and Lucas, and I woke up in the middle of the night and he’d drooled like,” Taeyong’s hands lift up his soup bowl, “ _this much_ on my shirt! And he only laughed and—”

Taeyong can’t stop talking.

“Jesus, Yong,” Johnny interrupts gently, laughing a little when big eyes turn to him immediately, “slow down a little. A little more eating and a little less talking.” He motions his chopsticks to the crab and meat on Taeyong’s plate, barely eaten. There hadn’t been much time for eating between Taeyong’s excitement.

“Chicago!” Mark cheers, “oh my god, Johnny-Hyung, the concert was crazy. Taemin said it was his favorite and I was like ‘this is ‘cause it’s Johnny’s hometown’, and _oh my god!_ ” his voice rises in volume at the last part, almost vibrating in his seat. He turns to Taeyong, laughing hard enough that it has Johnny worrying about the table and the dishes. Nobody else really knows what’s going on, except for Taeyong, who scrambles to get Mark at the end of the table.

“No!” Taeyong screeches, “Mark!”

Jaehyun’s got quick reflexes, and he grabs Taeyong, who only half-heartedly tries to escape his grip, while Mark erupts in giggles.

“Taeyong, he-,” Marks hand flails, before he loses his ability to speak again, shaking like he’s hit by an earthquake.

“ _Mark!_ ” Taeyong protests again. The members start complaining that nobody knows what’s going on, and _Mark stop laughing about your own jokes._

Mark concedes, minimal in his effort to get a grip on himself, moving to the entranceway of the room, where’s a little more space. Waiting on what’s coming, there’s little sounds other than Taeyong roistering. 

“I can’t believe this, man,” Mark laughs, body twitching with giggles, before he focuses. 

The meat doesn’t wait whether Mark is explaining his joke or not, so there’s a little visual demonstration Johnny misses, but Mark starts rapping a part Johnny recognizes as Taeyong’s, and the other members start laughing really hard, and Taeyong screams a little pitifully, before he flops onto Doyoung, dying.   
“I know, I know this!” Donghyuck yells, somewhere in between.

At the rap Mark imitates, recognition dooms on Johnny.

And when Johnny looks back up he catches a moment where Donghyuck and Mark are knees-spread, before flipping over to do the grind-on-you dance. It’s a poor execution of whatever it’s trying to be, because Mark is barely holding his laughter, and Donghyuck grinds against the ground with a body tension of a wet noodle. 

“Dangerous woman, right? Right?” Yuta points around wildly, until Donghyuck gets his shit together enough to nod. It wasn’t that, Johnny thinks to himself, but he doesn’t say that. He’d rather push his face onto the sizzling grill than to even remotely admit he looked up Taeyong’s fancams while they were apart. Especially those where the smaller man spreads his legs apart on the floor and then pretends to grind into it.

“Idiot, that was No manners–“ Jungwoo falls into the debate, but Yuta shows no sign of accepting a correction.

“I saw that!” Yuta crows, and Mark just absolutely collapses upon making it back to his seat. “You _whore!_ ” Yuta leans past Jaehyun and Doyoung over to shake Taeyong’s shoulder violently. 

Taeyong plays dead, being shaken like a ragdoll. Eyes squeezed closed, he’s hanging onto Doyoung shoulder, who pats his thigh comfortingly.   
“Hey now, stop teasing, he’s _shy,_ ” drily, Doyoung comments. the last part is said with such intonation of irony it’s clear what Doyoung really thinks.

“Two-face Taeyongie,” Jaehyun croons, a term that's become almost a staple.

Johnny chuckles a little, as the conversation loops into something less hysterical.

_(“The interview I watched made it seem like Kai-hyung fell in love with Mark.“_

_“What? No, no, Hyung, what are you even saying—“_

_“Oh no,” Donghyuck bemoans, acting as if he’s crying, suddenly a heap on the bench. “I’ve got no chance against that man.”)_

“How is Ten?” Johnny finally asks, and now Taeyong’s eyes flick toward him. His eyes shake a little at the direct question. Johnny doesn’t even look at Mark as he poses the question. It’s kind of unmistakable– that this is an excuse just to talk with Taeyong.

“Oh, uh, he’s good. His chinese improved like crazy in the course of, what-“ Taeyong’s lids flutter in nervousness, turning toward Mark. “A handful of months, right?”

“Yeah,” Marks eyebrows raise, shaking his head in admiration. “Even with all the choreography we had to learn and shit, still studying.”

Mark says that like he can’t believe people could do that. Johnny finds it a little funny, considering Mark never rested for more than 30 minutes per day during trainee season. Even now, as the one overworked member of nct, he acts like learning a language during promotions is exceeding expectations.  
Mark says it like overworking himself to the point of utter exhaustion isn’t something he does with a sense normalcy other people have as they’re putting toothpaste on their toothbrush.

It is to be admired, of course, but it's also just kind of expected of them. 

“Ten hates me,” Donghyuck throws in, laughing.

“So? So does every second member of NCT,” Jungwoo comments, not even looking up from the crab-stew he shovels into his mouth.   
The older members erupt in laughter, Jaehyun booming out a literal ‘ _ha ha ha,_ ’ slapping onto the table so hard his beer almost spills. He barely catches it, snapping out of his laughter somewhere between that, eyes wide and mouth pulled back in the corners with a weird sound of surprise. It only makes the others laugh harder.

Donghyuck just stares, mouth open in mock-shock. Jungwoo reaches over to stick his finger into Donghyucks mouth, yanking back before Donghyuck’s mouth can snap close. Taeyong crumbles in laughter, falling right over and behind Doyoung, who almost rolls over as well at Taeyong’s instability.

Mark is asking Donghyuck what he did while they were away, and Donghyuck launches into a detailed description of an argument he and Renjun had about a choreography. a flood of other comments about the dreamies follow, and Mark eats, nodding along with a small smile on his lips. Johnny shifts his legs under himself so he can get a better angle for flipping the meat, sizzling away on the grill. He smiles, too, a little to himself. Yuta talks about a rare figurine he bid on and won that’s set to arrive every day now. Johnny’s thoughts drift to how Mark still feels a special kind of responsibility over the other younger members of dream, even departed from the unit, he's still the one they look up to.

Increased alcohol intake and his arm over almost open flame gets Johnny a little too hot under his hoodie quickly. He flips all the beef-strips in rapid succession, putting the tongs on his plate to shuck off his hoodie quickly, and get right back to the thinly sliced meat before it loses its tenderness.

( _Wow_ , someone says, drawn out into admiration.)

“Well, damn!” Mark whistles, loudly, and some members jeer in reaction, and Johnny lifts his gaze from the meat to see what’s happened.

“I know what you were doing!” Mark laughs, pointing at Johnny. About ten faces are turned toward Johnny within seconds. Specifically, his now bared arms, the short sleeve of his t-shirt pulled up to this shoulder because of his extended arm. 

“Woah, man, that’s _insane_ -, let me touch.”

Mark is absolutely _stupid_ , and Johnny loves him really much. “Fuck off, idiot,” he laughs, but Mark is adamant. 

“Yo, I mean it! Your arm looks, like, angry!” 

Johnny doesn’t do the work, but he leans over slightly so Mark doesn’t have to lean into Jaehyun’s plate. Mark gets a grubby hand on his bicep, squeezing, as Johnny flexes jokingly. Johnny isn’t a prick, but he is proud of the amount of change he’s done to his body in such a short time. It was a lot of work, and he was willing to put it in. Why be shy about it?

Johnny’s never been unfit- all of them haven’t ever. Having low stamina in a group that’s gained its name by how taxing their dance is, just doesn’t go. Since joining SM, he’s never allowed to let himself go.  
But, well, he’s never invested quite as much into his body and health as he’s done this comeback. Added to the humongous content schedule they had planned, he’d had the added time spent in the gym.

He’s not one to brag, but the efforts had payed off. He had bulked up nicely, become strong enough to not be out of breath after his usual warm-up sesh, and he could lift Donghyuck and Doyoung up at the same time- and that really was when he thought: wow, this is _nice_.

He wonders if it’s normal to develop some sort of washed out hybris with a large gain of strength? Because he _likes_ it, the strength, how his long-sleeve shirts just don’t fit right anymore, how eyes linger on his muscles, and how the members compliment him. Donghyuck had ooh-ed and aah-ed enough to last a lifetime while Johnny went through his transformation. Honestly, it does wonders for his confidence. He doesn't feel that awkward anymore out-of-place-feeling anymore, like he has to have a reason why he’s the tallest; now there's almost a feeling of having earned being the biggest member.

The main motivating factor of his little metamorphosis was solely his health, his confidence, a little gimmick for the music video, and that's something Johnny stands by. But in reality, it had been all of the things above, and then another little motivational factor.

It wasn’t one of the planned ones, no, this one just creeped up on him by how it kept recurring in the many hours he spent in the gym. Wondering, what Taeyong would think, whether he would like it or not. 

It was a question, long left unanswered. Because while they were busy preparing for their comeback, Taeyong had been made busy with such an overdose of overseas schedules that usually wouldn’t accumulate with all their member’s flights combined. Johnny didn’t envy him, not in the least. He had thought Taeyong was already spread too thin a year ago, before he had been added to another group.

Taeyong though, in his sweet disposition, took nothing for granted but everything as an opportunity, giving it his all every single day. SM-entertainment's best— that was the idea behind this current group, and while Johnny thought it to be somewhat unnecessary in the beginning, he wouldn’t deny that Taeyong’s place was well deserved. So was Ten’s, Lucas’s, and every other member of course, but if Johnny had the ability to, he’d easily crown Taeyong as south korea’s golden boy.

That’s not playing favorites. Johnny tries to treat his friends in the nicest way possible,- he’s not saying Ten and Mark don’t work hard, or that he doesn’t miss them— there’s just the slight difference that he’s not head over heels in love with them.

And that he’s not sleeping with either of them. That’s only Taeyong, who he pulls into his bed sometimes, sometimes often, most times only seldomly. Mostly only when he knows Taeyong is pulled as tight as bowstring, stressed and overworked. 

Johnny wasn’t ever that good in math, but that equation he can solve easily. 

A bunch of teenage boys plus a very strict dating ban, multiplied by fanservice: equals a fuckton of sexual frustration.

That’s how it started, really, as vent for frustration, because it’s only natural to seek sexual comfort, but it’s more than a hassle to do that without getting found out in the business they are in.   
Johnny _gets_ that, but yeah, now he’s invested in a kind of friends with benefits situation, while he’s an absolute goner. He’s not really one to brag about self-respect with how things are going, but Johnny doesn’t really see a reason to stop, either.

Why look for a problem when there is none? It helps them both- gives Taeyong someone who kneads out the knots in his back, and Johnny the momentary retrieve of what it would be like to be loved by Taeyong.  
But yeah, that’s a thing that happens. And Johnny’s fine with it, because it’s better to pine a little while he knows he’s the only one that gets Taeyong between the sheets, than not to have him at all, just to wallow in his own pride and be miserable.

Marks eyes go wide, eyebrows pulling up beneath his fringe, and he Ooh’s loudly. His fingers squeeze around the big muscle appreciatively. 

“Woah, dude, that’s hot.” He says that in such a Mark way, his intonation always kind of plain sounding, put on the weirdest places, but so, so amusing.

“Stop it,” Johnny says, waving the compliment away like he’s a fourteen year old girl responding to classroom-compliments, making laughter bubble up again. The meat is almost burning, but Johnny’s body takes a little to stop shaking with laughter.

“You should see his body- it’s like he’s out of gundam,” Donghyuck throws in, words garbled between food still in his mouth. Taeil makes a sharp sound, digging an elbow Donghyuck’s side.

_(“What? That doesn’t even make sense. They’re machines,” Yuta says. “Yeah but that’s what I mean, he’s hard like steel,” “but they don’t have six-packs—“)_

“Beef?” Johnny asks the table in general, still laughing a little.

Johnny collects the little burnt strips of meat off of the grill, handing some out to the eager plates immediately held toward him.  
Something ticks his brain off, and it’s a couple of seconds until Johnny fonds the oddity he noticed to be that Taeyong hasn’t spoken in some time, odd in it’s opposition to his earlier overflow of words.

He takes the last few strips off of the grill and puts them on Taeyong’s plate, who makes a choked noise of protest. Someone complains to the right of Johnny, but he pays them no mind.

Taeyong’s cheeks are already red up to his cheekbones, and his head dips in a short little nod at Johnny’s action, barely meeting his eyes. Briefly, Johnny wonders if he’s already _that_ drunk. Taeyong’s hand is already waving in disagreement, and Johnny knows Taeyong will give the meat to whoever just complained.

“You look too skinny again,” Johnny admonishes, making a disapproving sound in good meaning. He wants to hold Taeyong’s eyes, make it clear that this is a concealed way of asking _are you okay?_ Or maybe it’s something else, Johnny doesn’t even really know himself. He just wants Taeyong to look healthy again, spoil him a little too much, indulge him like he couldn’t while the other was gone.

“You, uh- you _don’t_. Thank you, Johnny, I mean-“ Taeyong stammers out, and Johnny wheezes out a little laugh. ( _Smooth_ , someone coughs from the end of the table, and Taeyong’s ears positively glow with embarrassment.)

“He’s always skinny, though,” Doyoung says, pinching into Taeyong’s side not too kindly. “Barely anything on that slab o’ meat!”

  
… 

  
  
Johnny can only imagine the switch between SuperM and NCT feeling like whiplash. He himself doesn’t have to change his behavior much, except for the difference of being in front of cameras or not. He’s almost always surrounded by members younger than him, and he knows how to take care of them well. He’s just Johnny, not their leader, not their youngest, just some position in between.

While Taeyong was away, he found himself stepping in some of the prints Taeyong had left. He MC’s, he pays for food when it’s needed, and he scolds Donghyuck when he goes too far. All of that, while barely talking to Taeyong. He imagines Taeyong maybe would’ve liked some snippets of their daily life, but Johnny couldn't bring himself to do it.

Some time ago, he’d always chalked texting silence with Taeyong up to this: if he didn’t hear anything from Taeyong, things were going good for him. 

But worry is an incessant thing, and a thought as simple as that does little to turn it off.

But Johnny- he just let’s Taeyong be while he’s away on different promotions. Because he can only imagine how it must feel to finally be in a group where he doesn’t hold any position of authority, with a handful of older members to act as leader and hyung. He wouldn’t want to confuse Taeyong. He lets him be a SuperM member when he’s away, not reminding him of Taeyong’s role as leader, pillar of NCT.

Johnny just lets him be. Taeyong’s been the determined one of them two, the one who’s never even once lost sight of his goal. He shouldn't pester him with his own addiction of attention, even with oceans between them.

  
… 

“I don’t know where my sleep shirt is,” Taeyong explains as he selects one of Johnny’s from the heap of clothes on a stool in the corner of Johnny’s half.

“Get a fresh one then—,” Johnny wants to correct him, because that’s his unwashed sleep shirt, but Taeyong’s already got it pulled over his own head. Johnny turns his face back toward his phone jerkily, his gut reacting way to mindlessly for his taste at the sight of Taeyong in his clothes.

Johnny tries to blend out the fidgety shape of Taeyong’s body as he moves around the room. Shorts barely reaching above the knee, Taeyong’s legs are almost white in the low light of the room, streetlights filtering through their window. Johnny tries to get a hold of anxious nervousness making his fingers feel tingly. Does Taeyong feel the same staticky tension of what could be?

Taeyong comes to a stop. He stands next to Johnny’s bed, just- waiting. There’s a tremor in Taeyong’s hand by his hip, and Johnny thinks that he’s so small. He’s got on one of Johnny’s own sleepshirts, which means it’s even loose on him, so Taeyong looks like a portion sized half-too small for it.

“Can I-,” Taeyong doesn’t finish, but his hand fiddles with the task of pointing at the mattress next to where Johnny is laying.

Fluttery tension seeps out of Johnny muscles at that. This is what Johnny’s been waiting for, for Taeyong to slide into bed next to him, show him that it’s still same as always, and that Johnny’s hands on him are still the ones he wants. His heart thumps around happily at Taeyong’s shy but sure proposition.

Acting like its nothing, he nods.

Johnny laughs lowly when visible tension slips out of Taeyong just as well, and he slides down next to Johnny with very little finesse. His movements are a little clunky, Taeyong's knees clacking against Johnny’s as he turns to his side to look at Johnny.

Johnny smiles, turning back to his phone. He doesn’t even know what he was watching, even though it made sense 10 minutes ago. It’s a variety show- some of the hosts they’ve met as well. A newly debuted girl group is made to tell embarrassing facts about themselves that make Taeyong exhale a sound of amusement. His breath hits against Johnny’s skin, and, and— Johnny’s stomach lurches at that alone.

“I lost my switch,” Taeyong murmurs, after a comfortable silence has stretched on for a little time.

“Oh, sad,” Johnny says, compassionate. Taeyong hums, and from the corner of his eyes Johnny can see his lips push into a pout.

“I lost all my animal crossing data with it, too,” he whispers, sounding so genuinely upset that it’s almost laughable that the reason for it is his game. Taeyong had played that game almost every flight for hours on end, and Johnny _gets_ that it’s sad he lost it.   
What he doesn’t get it how invested Taeyong was in a game that was so endlessly boring. 

Johnny watched him play once, slouched next to Taeyong waiting in the boarding area. His own phone was dead, and watching Taeyong play his little game seemed like an appropriate waste of time. In the end all Taeyong did was throw in fishing rods, pulling out an endless supply of the same three fish out of the pixelated ocean. At least it had put Johnny to sleep properly, while Taeyong had cutely chatted away, explaining the game to him.

“That’s even worse,” Johnny admits, nodding with empathy. 

“All my villagers will have forgotten me. When I buy it new,” Taeyong bemoans further, and now it’s getting really hard for Johnny to keep a grin from splitting open his mouth. There are tons of things Taeyong could be upset over, yet it’s the fact that a handful of digital animal-villagers will have forgotten him, that upsets him most. It’s almost comically tailored to Taeyong’s character that it amuses Johnny.

A comfortable silence lapses again, Taeyong, too, following the video on Johnny’s screen. A little while passes, until the video ends. Johnny doesn’t click on to the next one when it does, just lets the frozen screen speak for itself for a minute while he tries to get a grip on himself, and what he wants to do. 

He can feel Taeyong’s eyes on the side of his face, waiting for something to happen; anything. He pulls a breath in, sure in what he wants, but unsure of what he’s allowed to do right now.   
Tension begins to pull tight with time passing.

But before the rubber snaps back to leave red welts on the hand he pulled it back with, Taeyong’s baritone voice sounds into the space between them.

“Missed this,” Taeyong murmurs, voice resonating like a bass guitar up his throat. Johnny turns his face to look at Taeyong, his phone laid down onto his chest. The others’ eyes are big and searching, tracing along Johnny’s face like he’s looking for something, as in turn Johnny’s gaze clings to Taeyong’s face.  
His lips are cracked open and dry, and he’s got a few pimples on his cheek. The scar next to his eye reflects with a sheen of sweat, and maybe the rubber band snaps against the inside of Johnny’s ribs instead; a pang of familiar pain accompanying the realization of just how pretty Taeyong is.

“I would’ve liked you there,” he continues, a knee pressing against the side of Johnny’s thigh, body shifting. His voice is private in its intonation, like he’s telling Johnny a secret.

“So you could’ve helped me with english,” Taeyong adds, and it sounds like a tacked-on afterthought to Johnny’s ears.

Johnny follows Taeyong’s lead, shifting onto his side so they’re both facing each other.

“You had Ten. And Mark,” Johnny says, disputing Taeyong’s statement, but nonetheless his heart fizzles like pop rocks.

Taeyong hums in agreement, eyes shifting to beneath Johnny's chin. “But you never get annoyed when I repeat the english words.”

Johnny tries to remember if he ever has. To him, it’s something so normal that he hadn’t even wasted a thought about making Taeyong stop doing so. His eyes have drifted off of Taeyong’s own as he followed his train of thought, and when he comes back to the present, Taeyong’s eyes are a little wider, shaking, unsure where to settle.

“Can we-,” Taeyong starts, not really meeting Johnny’s gaze for more than a millisecond. his hand flutters between them, unsurely, “you know.”

Johnny knows. 

Taeyong hands slip behind Johnny’s neck so naturally it’s like they’ve never even left each other’s side for more than a day.

Taeyong tastes salty like the meal from earlier, and their lips catch a little on each other with the salty dryness.

Johnny’s neck strains almost immediately with their meet-in-the-middle, so wraps his arm on his open side around Taeyong’s waist. He tugs, once, so their bodies press along each other.

Taeyong smells a little bit like sweat, hair product, and— a lot like Johnny himself. It throws him for a loop the entirety of a few seconds, before he remembers that the smaller man is wearing Johnny’s own sleep shirt. Underneath it, his body runs hot from alcohol, and Johnny enjoys the press of warmth along his front.

Taeyong licks into his mouth languidly, setting his own indulgent tempo, humming when Johnny’s arm tightens. Johnny just lets him enjoy himself for a minute, reciprocating the movement atop of his own lips. Taeyong isn’t shy with kisses. He’s almost too bold in comparison to his other behavior, biting Johnny’s lips and pressing almost bruisingly, because the kisses they share- almost always drenched in urgency and need- don’t leave much for sappy and slower kisses. Funnily enough, Johnny would have expected the exact opposite, for their teeth to clack with desperation and Taeyong to be all over him.

The slower tempo is perfectly fine with Johnny, though, who runs his hand under Taeyong’s shirt, enjoying the feel of him beneath his hands again. Taeyong’s skin is smooth, and his muscle definition must be as lovely as ever, if Johnny were to have a look. He can’t grasp the full feel of it, with both of them propped on their sides there’s only a very limited mobility. 

A little boldly, Johnny lets his hand run down to Taeyong’s ass, just to cop a feel. A surprised laugh is blown against his lips, and he chuckles a little himself. If Taeyong can use him for self indulgence, he figures, so can he. 

Still, he pulls away when Taeyong wants to continue the kiss. “You mind?” 

“Not at all,” Taeyong breathes back into his mouth, pulling Johnny back into the kiss by his hands on the back of his neck.

With a tongue pushed between his teeth again, Johnny pulls his hand upward, over the curve on the back of Taeyong’s thigh to the swell of his ass. He’s not wearing underwear anymore, Johnny realizes, when his hand dragging underneath the pants’ leg doesn’t encounter anything but smooth, warm skin. Upon the discovery he groans into Taeyong’s mouth, sweeping his hand over the flare of Taeyong’s asscheek to between his thighs, just to pull Taeyong’s leg across his hip.

Immediately, his hand slips back under the waistband, this time digging in considerably, spanning over the entirety of Taeyong’s asscheek. Taeyong moans, unashamed, but rather quietly into his mouth. He bites down on Johnny’s lower lip until it feels tender, and releases it just for him to chase back into a kiss.

The crease of thigh to ass just feels the best kind of lovely right now, and so Johnny indulges himself to groping. Tightening his hands, releasing, and enjoying the give of Taeyong’s ass. He does so, kneading into the flesh of it, until the thought of wanting to be buried inside Taeyong gets more and more urgent.   
Taeyong’s leg has slid down some, so a little roughly, he pulls Taeyong's thigh even higher again. He knows how flexible the smaller man is, so he doesn’t worry in particular about hurting him, but Taeyong makes a little surprised noise into his mouth nonetheless. 

He shoves his hand back down Taeyong's poor excuse of shorts, down the center of his body, where it’s the hottest. Taeyong’s focus noticeably shifts from the kiss, lips dragging sluggishly, as Johnny’s hand slows– palm hot and heavy below his tailbone, fingers dangerously close to the cleft of his ass. Upon hearing no resistance, Johnny pushes lower, pressing his index finger on Taeyong’s hole and applying pressure. Taeyong, despite the harbinger of Johnny’s intentions, moans surprisedly, his own hips twitching back toward the sensation. Their lips disconnect from another with an obscenely wet sound.

“Wha-“ 

“Okay?” Johnny asks, trying to get a proper look at Taeyong’s face. The other man nods eagerly, thigh shifting atop of Johnny’s side, pulling him close to mouth along the corner of Johnny's mouth messily.

It’s not the pace, but the fact that he can’t put his hands around Taeyong’s waist like usual, that makes him fed up with the position. An idea creeps into his mind.   
He tightens his hand around the inside of Taeyong’s knee, pushing his other arm beneath Taeyong’s form to wind it around his torso. Then he pulls, setting the both of them into a motion that has Taeyong squeaking from the kiss in surprise. He catches a hand against the top of the unused bunk bed, eyes wide as he blinks down at Johnny who had pulled Taeyong upwards and into his lap in one smooth motion.

Like this, Taeyong’s hair falls around his face like a mess, just the way Johnny likes it, his swollen lips slightly open. A flush sits high on Taeyong’s cheeks, and the rosy flush makes him look beautifully alive. _All mine,_ Johnny thinks, somewhat intrusively.

Taeyong is struck immobile for a moment. And Johnny catches onto his hesitancy quickly. “Sorry, baby, couldn’t get my hands on you right. Is this okay?” 

Taeyong doesn’t answer, staring at Johnny like he just told him he sold Donghyuck to the organ harvesting market, and Johnny’s searching gaze returns little knowledge.

(If Taeyong could, he’d get annoyed by the fact of how often Johnny asks if things he does are okay– as if Taeyong wouldn’t go along with anything Johnny says. Somehow, miraculously, due to his dim wit, Johnny still hasn’t caught up with the fact that the second he decides what he wants to do with Taeyong, moving him like he wants, the slighter man is set off like a rocket to space.)

“Yeah– it’s- it’s okay,” Taeyong stutters, still looking a little shaken, but he snaps out of it fairly quickly. His hand lowers from the top of the bunk bed, slowly.

“What’s wrong?” Johnny asks, genuinely confused by Taeyong’s shift. He barely gets to the end of his question, before Taeyong’s fingers dig into the back of his neck so sharply he winces, lips pressed onto his own with an unforeseen urgency.  
Taeyong’s tongue presses against the seam of his lips, and Johnny isn’t one to resist- _why would he–_ and Taeyong muffles a moan into his mouth when their teeth click. His arm around Taeyong’s waist almost loses grip when Taeyong writhes against him, pressing himself against Johnny from top to bottom. 

“ _Fuck—_ ,” Johnny groans, tightening his arm around Taeyong’s middle, his other hand sliding to Taeyong’s thigh. His shorts have ridden up from the tension on the fabric, since Taeyong has got his thighs spread almost entirely atop of Johnny. A hand around the side of Taeyong’s hip guides him into the next downpush, one that has Taeyong keening when his cock grinds against hard planes of muscle. 

“Slow it down, baby,” Johnny tries to remind Taeyong, who’s a little frantic, writhing against Johnny’s body, hand tightening around Johnny’s bicep. He’s got his face pushed into Johnny’s neck, wet sound of pleasure riding out of him, panted against the side of Johnny’s neck.

“I can’t- you’re _so–“_ he never finishes his statement, ending in a throaty, almost strangled moan when his hips tip forward and push down into Johnny’s. He chases his own pleasure, stupid with how Johnny’s dick feels sliding against his own through two layers of fabric.

“I’m here, ‘m not leaving,” Johnny tries to say because that's thing that comes to his sex-addled mind as the right thing, but his own voice sounds weird and gravelly to his own ears, Taeyong only keening at the sound murmured wetly against the side of his face.

There’s an edge of desperation to Taeyong tonight, like he’s depending on Johnny’s touch to not lose it completely, and Johnny is unsure if it’s the alcohol, or something else he hasn’t been told yet, but for the time being he just bounces off of the frenzied energy Taeyong has. It’s almost relieving, to have Taeyong push against him like a man in the desert, because it feels so similar to how Johnny feels most days just looking at the shorter boy.

Taeyong’s hands scrabble against Johnny’s stomach, half tangled in his shirt; so Johnny’s leans back a little to get a little bodily distance between them, and pulls it off.

His stomach tickles with some giddiness, nervously fluttering; but at the same time he’s strangely calm and confident. Even if undressing has no particular effect on Taeyong, it won’t push down his own pride of getting to his own goal.

Except– he doesn’t have to worry about it at all. Upon Johnny’s muscles being bared Taeyong makes a choked noise in the back of his throat, lids dropping low. He crowds his body against Johnny’s- still leaned back- and the added weight makes his fall back to the bed, Taeyong taking it in stride. 

“What the _fuck_ Johnny-,” Taeyong whispers, urgent and breathy, pushing his own hips down onto Johnny’s vigorously, “ _when_ did you get so hot—“ 

It’s not a question that really needs to be answered, but Johnny can’t help but laugh a little at Taeyong’s genuine visible confusion. He’s all over him again by the next second again, rough in how he pushes his teeth against the side of Johnny’s neck. Taeyong’s hips push down insistently, but without real rhythm, rutting against Johnny like he’s out of mind.

Johnny’s thumb pushes into the soft space on the insides of Taeyong’s hip bones and the slight definition of his tummy- a scar mirrored on the left hip. His other hand digs into the meat of Taeyong’s ass and thigh, middle finger digging into the crux of it as he hitches Taeyong’s hips down into his own, their lengths pushed together.  
Taeyong collapses, one hand braced somewhere on Johnny’s stomach, the other digging into the meat of his shoulder. Taeyong himself rights himself up to pull the shirt off of his back, throwing it into the corner of Johnny’s bed onto a plushie. He pushes down again, guided by Johnny’s sure idea of movement, not allowing him to go faster than the larger man wants.

Selfishly, Johnny drinks in the sight of Taeyong’s body undulating atop of his own, his spine dipping down with each grind down and back. His body is so beautiful, sharp and defined, but possessed by such irresistible wantonness when they’re like this. Sometimes watching Taeyong feels like he’s doing something illegal.

The muscles in his stomach flex, soft in their definition, when his hips twitch with a particularly accurate thrust. His eyes are pushed shut, fluttering open every now and then. He looks like he’s got absolutely no control left of his body, of his expressions, or the sounds he makes, except for his hips flexing down atop Johnny’s. His thighs are spread apart as wide as they could possibly go, and it makes the contrast tapering into his tiny waist just _that_ much lovelier.

Johnny loves Taeyong’s waist, small and defined, sloping up into those sharp shoulders. Johnny is obsessed with Taeyong, that much is clear to him by now, but there’s only _that_ many things that can compare to the sight of his own hands spanning around that tiny breadth of Taeyong’s torso.   
He can tell it does something to Taeyong as well, because that’s how he found out one of those first special spots- those that make Taeyong melt in his arms. One of those is when Johnny spans his hands around his tiny waist, and lets his thumbs dig in the soft skin on the insides of the handles of Taeyong’s hip bones. A decided press in there, and a rough drag of teeth across his clavicle and he’s a _goner._

Moans spill out of Taeyong’s mouth without inhibition, panting as their gazes lock. Taeyong looks positively feral, grey hair sticking in patches to his skin, his skin flushed down to his chest. 

“ _Ah-“_

A drop of sweat falls down when Taeyong’s body jostles with a particularly hard thrust of Johnny’s own hips jerking up, both their eyes slipping shut. 

The moons of Taeyong’s fingernails dig into Johnny's abdominal muscles. Johnny wishes he had the real thing, to be buried to the hilt in Taeyong’s heat, and have him bouncing on his cock with his eyebrows pulled together and mouth in that pretty o-shape, but this is truly just a release of a craving two people shared, and no thought-through slow-prep kind of sex.

Taeyong tips forward, mouth latching onto the side of Johnny’s neck, likewise, Johnny’s hands leave their darkened spots on Taeyong’s hips, dragging down underneath Taeyong’s shorts to grasp two handfuls of his ass. Taeyong moans wetly into Johnny’s ear, hips pushing back into Johnny’s grasp, while his whole body is shake with twitches every now and then, overwhelmed with pleasure.  
Taeyong hiccups little sounds against Johnny’s skin as Johnny drags him open. A thrust forward, and Johnny can feel the clear line of Taeyong’s cock pushing into the vertical dip between his abs, and Taeyong bites down on Johnny’s shoulder to muffle a particularly loud moan. Johnny groans, too, caught off guard by the surge of arousal in his stomach at that sensation. 

“O-oh god, Johnny, I’m close-“ Taeyong rushes out, and Johnny’s head jerks in immediate agreement. 

Taeyong braces an arm on the mattress besides Johnny’s head, and guides Johnny into a kiss that’s more a crash-together of wet mouthing against each other than anything else. Taeyong sucks on Johnny’s tongue a little, but his focus shifts with each uncoordinated thrust onto Johnny’s stomach. The surface of Johnny’s skin is as hot as a stove, hardened muscle twitching when Taeyong’s cock drags along Johnny’s happy trail.

“Fuck, you’re so–,” Taeyong moans, voice broken, “so hot-“ his fingers clench into his abs, _clearly_ doing something to him.

In Johnny’s opinion, it’s taken him like— _five_ years too long to notice this particular feature of Taeyong. He _knows_ Taeyong, even prides himself on that he does it better than everyone else.

Then why, why does he only now notice that Taeyong most definitely has got a thing for strength and muscles and getting manhandled.

Johnny’s hands pull on their grip they have on Taeyong’s ass, pulling him open and having Taeyong’s body shake at the act of exposing him. His own body is pushing down against Johnny, trapping his cock between Johnny’s abs and his own stomach. The drag of fabric between them two creates a rough friction, but Taeyong doesn’t even have half a mind to change anything about their mindless grinding right now. 

Johnny lets one hand loose, moving it up to the small of Taeyong’s back and pressing down. Essentially, it makes the pressure on his cock even bigger, even without Johnny’s own body pushing up against his. Johnny’s abs flex with the movement, beneath Taeyong’s own cock drooling through the fabric of his pants, and the hand he’s got pushed uncomfortably between the two of them; it has the knot of heat in Taeyong’s stomach tightening even further. It’s that, that makes him come, shuddering out a uncontrolled moan into Johnny’s mouth. His hips twitch weakly, body shuddering like his voice as he tenses and releases, Johnny’s hands a heavy brand of heat on his body. 

“ _Johnny_ —,” he keens, vision swimming and heat coursing through his entire body, Johnny’s hand tightening on his ass as Taeyong rides out his orgasm.

“Fuck,” Johnny’s eyes squeeze shut, groaning, his own hips pushing up into Taeyong’s limp body. In less than a second, Taeyong’s vision blurs as he’s tipped over onto his back, thighs still spread open with Johnny kneeling between them.

He pushes his own sweats below his balls, grabbing his own cock into a frantic hand as it pushes up when released from under the fabric. He’s so pretty, Taeyong thinks, watching Johnny’s torso in all it’s glory above him. Miles and miles of perfect tan skin stretch tightly over defined bulks of muscle, moving with shaky breaths.  
Johnny tips forward, catching himself on his elbow by Taeyong’s head in a reversal of their previous position. His biceps flexes with the motion of his hand on his cock.

The come in his shorts is sticky when his thighs move to accommodate Johnny even closer, pushed into Taeyong’s personal space to the crux of his thighs. It should feel kind of disgusting, considering how adamant he is about cleanliness every other day, but he can’t help but relish in it. It feels filthy, yet it makes heat burn up inside his stomach again, despite already having come. It’s the way only Johnny makes him feel, sexy even when he’s got spit dripping down onto his collarbone and he smells sour from sweat. 

“Let me,” he pants, pushing Johnny’s own hand off of his cock, spitting into his hand to get the slide easier. It’s feverish, the difference of how much less he can grasp of Johnny’s cock than Johnny himself, especially when he sees his own hand take Johnny’s place. Johnny must think something similar, because his head falls down, cursing some string of words in english as his hips push into Taeyong’s hand around his cock. His sharp pants and thrusts make the muscles in his stomach twitch with contraction, and Taeyong’s eyes bounce between Johnny’s chest, face, his abs, and his perfect cock, unsure where to look because it all makes him weak to the point his toes curl into the sheets. 

“I’m-,” Johnny’s head tips up again to look at Taeyong, lips bitten raw by Taeyong, and strings of hair sticking to his forehead. He looks like Taeyong’s personally tailored wet dream, and Taeyong muffles a moan at just the sight of it. He reaches his free hand up to his own chest, flicking across his nipple, stimulation multiplying the heady feeling in his stomach.

“‘M gonna cum, baby.” Johnny groans, hips flexing, and Taeyong’s own stomach contracts at that word alone. He feels hot all over, barely getting air into his own lungs.   
_Baby_ , Johnny keeps calling him when they’re in bed, and Taeyong wants to melt into a puddle every time that word slips across Johnny’s lips. Either that, or he wants to drop to his knees there and then, push his mouth onto Johnny’s crotch and just let the taller man do whatever he wants, because Taeyong loves that– being _Johnny’s baby._

That only spurs Taeyong on, flicking his wrist sharply on the upstroke, just because it gets Johnny faster to the edge than anything else. He’s transfixed, watching the head of Johnny’s cock peeking through the ring of his fingers with every thrust. Johnny, too, watches, rough grunts dripping from his lips. 

He looks so, so strong. All kinds of beautiful, all the time, but his muscles make Taeyong feel even smaller under him, even crazier for the taller man.

“Want you to come on me,” he whispers. Johnny’s eyebrows perform a short dance on his forehead, moaning just at the words, sounding so sinful coming from Taeyong.

“Jesus _fuck-,_ ” he pants, hips flexing into the ring of Taeyong’s small hand once, twice, three times. Johnny’s expression is determined and hard, roughly jerking the waistband of Taeyong’s shorts down. Taeyong’s cock, half-hard and in a sticky mess of his own cum, slaps against his stomach— and Taeyong’s moans surprisedly at the rough treatment, the fire at the bottom of his own spine unfurling as his back arches upward—  
There’s a second and a moment melting into the sensation of hot liquid dripping onto Taeyong’s stomach. His own breath hiccups at the sudden warmth of Johnny’s come on his skin, and he keeps jerking him off _because it’s not stopping–_ white liquid splashing up to his ribcage– until he does stop coming, sinking down until their stomachs almost press together.

There’s a mess of white semen over the flushed skin of Taeyong’s stomach, heaving with arousal, more than there should be. Johnny’s shoulders heavy like they do after a particularly taxing performance, staring at a still shuddering Taeyong beneath him.

Johnny exhales, harshly, trying to pull in an actual breath. His own hand is still clasped in the waistband of the shorts, and he releases it slowly, Taeyong’s cock covered up again. Embarrassment burns almost overwhelmingly hot down the back of Taeyong’s neck as Johnny pulls back, eyes dipping down, and up into Taeyong’s flushed face. Taeyong doesn’t want to meet Johnny’s eyes-

“Did you just come again?” Johnny’s voice is incredulous.

“I- I, _yeah_ ,” Taeyong admits, his laughter helpless. Johnny pulls back, sitting up straighter between Taeyong still-spread legs. 

“Wow,” he says, and Taeyong agrees by repeating the word weakly. He misses Johnny’s broad form above his, warm air between dissipating, the second he retreats.

“ _Fucking_ hell, you’re one hell of a vision right now,“ Johnny pants, still catching his breath. Taeyong wants to fold inward at the unabashed gaze Johnny has just trailing across his body, without any inhibition, as if he’s looking at an item of his own possession. The thought of that sends a pleasurable shiver down his back. All the sexiness he felt letting Johnny come on his stomach just a few minutes ago is fading by the second, and he feels embarrassed of the mess on his own stomach.

“Don’t stare,” he complains weakly, knocking one of his knees into Johnny’s side; the other man is too fast though, hand curling around his knee before it can even make any impact, without his eyes ever actually leaving Taeyong’s splayed out form. 

“I’m serious. I almost wanna get up to get my camera.”

“Don’t even think about doing that–!” Taeyong gets a little livelier at that, unfolding his elbows that fell to cover his hotly flushed face at Johnny’s shameless words.   
His back flexes up, and he bites down on his lip to keep a moan from slipping— because with the motion of his body, their mixed cum starts sliding off of the side of his stomach, the sensation sudden and unexpected. Without his own volition, his hand reaches down, shaking a little as his fingers dip into the mess on his stomach. 

Johnny makes a sound that's almost a growl, mattress dipping by Taeyong’s head, pushing back up into Taeyong’s personal space as he slots their mouths together again. Taeyong’s surprise melts into a moan, Johnny murmuring against the side of his face as it tips sideways. “You know what you’re doing, aren’t you—“ 

Taeyong laughs, barely soundless because there's still way too little oxygen in his lungs.

“God, do you even know how you look right now– what you’re even _doing_ to me-“ 

Taeyong doesn't know, per se, but he can relate if it’s anything like what Johnny does to him.

  
Needless to say, Johnny’s night shirt _really_ needed that hottest-setting laundry run the next day.

  
  
… 

The fatality of Johnny’s infatuation creeped up on him, slowly, until it smacked him in the face on a wednesday morning in a brightly lit stand-by room. He is crouched over a slide of interview papers, pen hovering over the paper as the sixth question poised itself at him.

‘ _Describe your ideal type:_ ’ it reads, and Johnny blanches. Given the industry he is in, he has seen as many beautiful people as there is sand on a beach, and sure, he looks at certain idols, even staff members he sees passing by in the in music show hallways, and thinks them to be beautiful.  
And yet, as he sets to write something- _anything_ \- there’s just Taeyong that comes to mind.

He’s the only person that even comes close to the title, with all the faces Johnny has passed by, he’s just somehow still the most beautiful person Johnny has ever seen. He’s not the epitome of male handsomeness, like the actors in the superhero movies he watches with Donghyuck; neither is he close to the fragile beauty of say, IU, who is nearly every second male idols’ ideal type. 

Taeyong seems to be a category of his own.

Frankly, Taeyong looks a little at odds with himself, like someone went ahead and put the wrong head on a different body. Beautiful, dollish features on a face set on a sharp jaw, screwed on a sharp and boxed body.   
Funnily enough, that’s something Johnny had come to find only recently: that Taeyong is all angles– wide, boxy shoulders and thin, mile-long legs and defined collarbones. For a long time, Johnny had thought Taeyong was just a scrawny kid. And he is, but he’s facets of it, some exceeding the description, some just building a foundation for it.  
Sharp lines of protruding bone and muscle definition and angular sinews and veins move their way all over Taeyong’s body, sloping down from his broad, straight shoulders into defined arms and thinly covered wrists. Tight and even, like he’s pearls strung tightly on a chain, an assortment of angular shapes, pulled into life.

By itself, visibly, his body is little to no softness. And yet his behavior breathes a fragility, tender and beautiful, into his body: in the way he sits, pulled into himself, how his fingers move as if he’s always got a song stuck in his head. It’s a beautiful body set in motion and powered by the sweetest disposition, to run it day by day.

Johnny doesn’t really know _what_ it is; but he could stare for hours. At the round bambi-eyes in the same face with a sharp, bumped nose, above full and defined lips with a prominent V-shaped cupid’s bow. Taeyong is so perfect in himself, perfectly balanced between powerful fierceness and delicate habits. It’s even in the way his fingers move, beautifully and hesitant, thin and long, even if his knuckles are thickened, riddled with visible veins, masculine and feminine at the same time.

That’s Taeyong’s power, looking at him— he just takes one’s breath away, done up in tight fitting clothing and striking makeup, or just pajamas and a stubble-y chin.

Still, Johnny believes that it’s someone’s character,- when they show their real colors,- that can make or break someone’s appearance. He wouldn’t care if someone was visually exactly his type, if their character turned out to be petty and spiteful.   
Taeyong, however, _always the exception—_ Johnny probably wouldn’t even be able to stop staring at the shorter man even if Taeyong's favorite pastime was punching puppies.

Taeyong is just himself, truly and faithfully,– and somehow it’s enough to let every person but him pale in comparison to Johnny’s eyes. 

A little bit floored, Johnny leans his torso back up, pulling a much needed breath of air into his lungs.

“You stuck on the same question, Hyung?” Mark asks from a few feet away, shuttered away from the other members as they fill out the papers, ordered to sit apart from each other because this is a TMI-segment. 

“Maybe. What question you on?” He returns, easily, even though his hands feel clammy, enough to wave the paper where he’s got his hand laid over. His realization isn’t bad, per se, not really something worrisome enough that it shakes his world apart. But it’s still something, just another coin he plops into his mental piggy bank he fills with thoughts and feelings about Taeyong. It’s just something that makes the piggy bank grow in size tenfold, because Johnny _really_ has to get a grip on his crush on Taeyong.

“Question eight, _something your fans don’t know about you yet_ ,” Mark reads, followed by a little laugh. “I’ve been asked this question so often there’s nothing left to reveal.”

Johnny’s head tips sideways in thought. “Maybe that you cry every time your mom is on the phone,” he supplies, smile spreading on his lips.   
_This_ is easy to him, to care about Mark, or any other member, to tease them playfully. To care about his friends, even with oceans between them, that’s easy. Just like he texts Ten enough for him to never leave his most recent five chats. It’s easy to him to make Mark laugh hard enough to double in on himself. 

It’s _not_ easy being in love with one of his closest friends. And especially so if you know what they sound like when you bite on their most sensitive spot on their neck. It elicits a chain reaction out of the plainest things, so much so that every third thought is left tainted, spiraled into want too easily. Johnny feels like he’s in the brunt of his teenage years again, stupid and easily distracted just because he’s got a crush.

Johnny can’t recall how often he’s had the intrusive thought of realizing pretty things about his band mates, even just platonically. Sometimes he’ll look at Doyoung and a thought akin to ‘that’s a very pretty jaw’ pops into his head. _Yup_ , he’ll agree to himself, and let the thought leave just like that again.

Most of the time, he can’t even see the handsomeness of his friends anymore. They’re just the faces of his friends, faces he knows so routinely that they’ve lost all standards of common prettiness, and have become a comfort. A new styling or unique makeup will set that routine recognition off, and he’ll be in awe at Donghyuck’s facial features or Jaehyun's neck.   
It’s just _thens_ and _theres_ ; except for Taeyong. Taeyong stays. Multiple times a week Taeyong will turn to Johnny, ask for something miscellaneous, tilt his head up because he’s so much shorter without insoles, a whole head lower, with his eyes wide and lips just— _there_ ; and Johnny’s brain will short circuit.  
He wishes it would stop, because it’s mostly an inconvenience. In the meanwhile, he cuts his teeth in learning self-restraint.

“I’m stuck on the ideal type one,” he admits, eyes on the paper instead of Mark. His eyes flick upward, to the hairstylist’s counter. Taeyong is bent over his paper, one hand propping up his head, the other is lifted to his chin, as he’s chewing on his fingernails. Again, Johnny notes, tutting mentally. It’s a habit that recurs too often, one that Taeyong is only ever able to shake in promotion breaks.

“That’s easy, though. Just stay vague, say something like long legs, or sexy, or ponytails.” Mark answers, shuffling his papers to pull the slot in question on top. “I literally just wrote ‘nice smile’.”

Johnny chuckles, nodding and turning to his own paper again.

“10 minutes!” Their manager yells, and Johnny spurs, only two pages in, sending the pen scratching on the paper.  
  
He barely scribbles in the last answer, before a staff begins to collect the papers. The answers they filled in will greet them again soon, when they’re prepared to be entertaining on a variety show. Johnny doubts any of his answers will make it.

“Yah, Jungwoo-sshi,” someone complains loudly, “you ruined my pen.” 

Johnny chuckles, watching as Jungwoo laughs bashfully, apologizing to their manager, who’s holding a pen with a chewed-up end between two pinched fingers.

  
  
… 

  
Irritating, unique, odd, confident, _provoking_. Those words were used to describe the concept in the pitch meeting for their latest comeback. Johnny's second within their group.

To Johnny those words sound like they’re just randomly picked out of a bucket, and it makes the task of taking some of the producers serious even harder. Not when the concept _unique, odd and provoking_ transcribed into real life is to make them look as deranged as possible.  
Their clothes are a fucking mess, he thinks, but doesn't say. Unique, odd— yeah, fair fucking enough. He wonders if the real concept here is a secret motivation of _all publicity is good publicity._

A staff member tugs at the lapel of his pink jacket. Pink, pink, all pink because the concept here is _cherries_. Even Taeyong’s hair is pink, and maybe that’s definitely a selling point for how Johnny views this concept. The styling of it at least. 

It’s not like he’s a fashion prodigy, but he could feel his retinas shrivel up when he came into the dressing room for the teaser photoshoot and the clothes rack had been a hellish concoction of thirty-five different patterns, all in squeaky-bright colors. 

It’s like his 189th day since being added to the group, his thousandth day of joining sm, and maybe day 675 since he first got introduced to Lee Taeyong. 

So, nothing new here. But then again Johnny isn’t sure when it happened— or if there even is a _when_ , or if the fact that Taeyong is beyond stunning managed to slip by him all this time.

Well, right now Taeyong’s waist is cinched in neatly by a belt over an unbuttoned military-looking jacket and— Johnny swallows drily— he’s got a handful of cherries shoved halfway into his mouth.

Cameras shutter in rapid succession, someone yelling as ecstatically as if witnessing the 8th wonder of the world. A cherry pops inside Taeyong’s mouth and a bloody red sweetness drips down Taeyong prone lower lip. Lights flicker like one million fireflies are up against the ceiling.

“That’s great, Taeyong-ssi! Great! Confidence!”

Is this allowed? Johnny thinks to himself, cheeks heating up. Is the photographer some kind of weirdo? 

He was sitting by some of the previous shootings, like Donghyuck’s, who had essentially just been told to sit on a chair and look pretty, or Jaehyun who was put on an old TV. He himself just had to stand in front of the squeaky plastic plane and give the camera a smouldering look across his shoulder and the photographer had been satisfied within 10 minutes. Johnny isn’t one of those people that is more confident in front of the camera than not.

And he thought Taeyong wasn’t either.

Taeyong really does sell the role as if he was, though. His hair is fittingly cotton-candy pink, and his eyes are lined with a purple-y brown that makes his eyes seem even bigger than they already are.  
The jacket sits nicely on his shoulders, accentuating the kind of box-ish shape of them, before the fabric wrinkles under the belt around his waist. Johnny is left wondering if the belt mustn’t hurt, considering how his waist still looks tiny with layers of clothing beneath it. The stylists must’ve cinched it really tight. 

Or maybe— maybe Taeyong’s midriff is really just that tiny. Once again, Johnny is a little relieved he isn't deemed their group’s visual and the stylist team’s doll by proxy of it.

The photographer shouts something, Taeyong changes poses, and Johnny is pulled out of his thoughts, uselessly standing at the side of the photoshoot.  
He scuffles around behind some staff members, looking for a free and comfortable place to sit to wait until Taeyong finishes the days shoot. He’s the last one left, and most of the members are either changing out of their outfits or already on their way home. Johnny barely avoids stumbling over an array of cables criss-crossed over the concrete floor of the shooting site. Soon he finds an empty, unlabeled chair, left of the photographer’s equipment. Back here, the light doesn’t reach, and he’s got an angled view of the happenings. 

He could, he supposes, just spend the time on his phone, but for some peculiar reason he just lets it stay in his pants’ pocket; fascinated enough by the scenery before him.

“Shall we swap out to the last prop?” Some staff member- one with the telltale black cap of the producers team- interrupts the photographer. There's a little conversation Johnny can’t really listen in to. Instead, he watches Taeyong bow as a tissue is handed to him to wipe the pink fruit juice dribbling down his chin. Jesus, Johnny thinks to himself, that's some dedication to the craft. _Provocative_ , pops into mind.

A short-haired female stylist fiddles with the belt around Taeyong’s waist, and Taeyong’s gaze drifts. Absentmindedly, he ruffles through his bubblegum hair- only for the stylist to let out a panicked sound, and Taeyong’s hand jerks down in lightning speed.

“Taeyong-ssi, we’re switching out to the last prop. This is kind of whimsical, which is why it’s still left over.” The megaphone sizzles a little, crackly over the music playing. “It might come across a little cheesy, but it would fit the concept perfectly. Try to make it work, but don’t worry if it doesn’t.” The photographer steps close, and waves a girl over to the both of them. 

Johnny's phone vibrates against his thigh. ‘ _You coming home with us?_ ’ A text from Mark reads. 

‘ _Nope. Waiting for Taeyong to finish. You go ahead_.’ He thumbs across the screen, pressing text and slipping his phone back into his pocket.

Johnny can’t see the object Taeyong is handed clearly, but he’s familiar with the slightly panicky but amused huff of air Taeyong lets out, just two sounds of ‘ha, ha’, and that makes Johnny even more curious. That's the sound of Taeyong being embarrassed right there.

“Won’t this look a little weird?” Taeyong asks, words tipping off into unsureness in the middle, presumably at questioning a higher rank. He’s too damn polite for his own good.

“We’ll try it out, Taeyong-ssi,” the photographer answers, voice absolute. He steps back behind some light screens, camera already lifted back up to his face. Taeyong nods, an embarrassed smile pulling at his lips. 

Then, he lifts a marbled lollipop to his mouth, and lays it down on his tongue. Johnny’s physically _feels_ his stomach tip down as if he’s in an airplane that lifts off of the ground, and his eyes widen. 

Somebody in the styling– concept, producer team— _wherever_ this idea came from— is out to get Johnny killed by an aneurysm. What the fuck, Johnny's brain loops brokenly, helplessly, watching Taeyong shift into pose.

 _Why_ — is Taeyong given a lollipop, and told to stare into the camera with his mouth open, eyes lidded heavily? Can someone please explain the creative executive idea here, please. _Provocative_ , his mind supplies, and _huh- that makes some sense._

But still— a lollipop. A candy that is basically impossible to see in someone’s mouth without having a connection close in mind, one that’s something raunchy.   
Johnny can’t really blame himself, there’s no way a teenage boy as touch-starved as him wouldn’t immediately connect the imagery between a long-ish, round object on someone’s tongue, and his mind supplying something nasty.  
Off goes an imaginary ping in his treacherous brain. _That looks like it equals phallic object!_

Then, all worry over Taeyong’s possible discomfort is momentarily wiped away, because like a switch is flipped, Taeyong’s lids sink lower than before, shoulders edging in and body taking on a confident slouch. A hand pushes into his waist, cockily.

“Perfect!” The photographer shouts, waving towards one of his assistants excitedly.

 _Absolutely the fucking worst,_ Johnny thinks, thrown in whiplash while watching Taeyong. When did Taeyong learn all this? When did he gain this impassive nonchalance in front of a camera when Johnny knows how shy Taeyong usually is? Is this not the Taeyong that crumbles in a bashful mess when told how pretty he is?

Taeyong tips his head sideways, pushing his tongue over the lollipop— and his shoulders straighten, hips tilting to the side and forward as if his body is one pendulum motion. Taeyong’s fingers shift around the handle of the candy, veins moving in tandem down the exposed wrist.   
There is something undeniably handsome in how stereotypically male and masculine his hands and forearms are, coupled with broad, edged shoulders. If it just wasn’t for his big puppy eyes and plush lips, or his waist. He’s built from terms on the opposite borders on the spectrum of aesthetically pleasing visuals and nonetheless— Johnny is left kind of speechless.

He doesn’t feel as if he knows the person in front of him, when at the same time, he’s the boy who’s been on his side the longest.  
Head caught in vertigo, Johnny doesn’t notice heat pooling in his stomach. At least until the sensation of the clammy inside of his palms sleeps through his pants uncomfortably.

Only then, he recognizes the feeling of definitively bordering on getting a boner— and well, that’s, _something_. That's something that has his gut lurching and brain spinning like it’s fixed on a turntable and somebody is remixing his synapses.

All of a sudden, Johnny feels like he’s caught in the wrong movie. He stands up, walking towards where he knows the restrooms were earlier almost on autopilot. But he only makes it to the hallway. 

Then, he leans against a wall, head racing with a thousand things and nothing at once. _What?_ He doesn’t know anything. His brain answers with bleached unknowingness. His pants are tighter than they should be, and his brain feels half the size.

He’s always had a massive soft spot for Taeyong’s character, and that he was pretty shouldn't be new to him either. It isn’t— Johnny’s thought Taeyong was pretty over two hundred times, and admittedly, there’s been the occasional wet dream, but that's only normal. _Right?_

It's _not_ normal to get a stiffy just watching Taeyong do his work.

“Taeyong, thank you for your time! You wrapped up perfectly,” the photographer says, faintly in the background and Johnny hears Taeyong say thanks like twenty times. He’s probably bowing, too, neatly, in a 90 degree angle. Perfectly mannered as always. Johnny smiles, grateful for the little return to normalcy he can grasp in his brain.

“Oh, there you are,” Taeyong greets as he’s rounding the corner, faltering when it’s Johnny directly behind the turn. 

“Yup. Here I am,” Johnny agrees, voice sounding a little squeaky. 

Taeyong doesn't seem to notice, or if he does, he doesn't comment on it. He just starts walking again, rightfully expecting Johnny to fall in step with him. He tugs the jacket out of the belt around his waist, slipping it off entirely— and _that_ answers Johnny’s question from earlier. 

Yes, his waist is really that fucking tiny.

“Did you watch? What do you think?” 

Johnny knows what his dick thinks of the shoot. But he’s not gonna say, _yeah, it was hot, almost went into the bathrooms just to jerk off_ — 

“I think you did great, Yong,” Johnny says, easily, because there is no reason to say anything but the truth, especially when it makes Taeyong’s eyes crinkle up in gratitude.

  
… 

Taeyong _hurts_. All over, his muscles feel like tearing paper as he moves them, even with just bowing down to grasp something in his bag.

It hurts, and Taeyong’s already taken pain medicine, but it doesn’t work; there’s still burning ache of muscles being stretched and contracted. Which is a given, because ibuprofen doesn’t make sore muscles go away, but Taeyong took it nonetheless, and now his stomach burns with acidity because they’ve not eaten in four hours. He doesn’t really recall his line of reasoning behind throwing those pills down his throat in the last short break.

The problem is that his foot doesn’t hit the floor twice-thrice like it’s supposed to do. Wouldn’t matter much, if he just wasn’t the center of formation. 

“No. No, no, no, _Taeyong_ ,” their choreographer snaps, like he can turn the name into an insult just by how sharply he says it.  
Like yelling at Taeyong is gonna do anything to make Taeyong hit the triple half-second beats. As soon as the music is angrily waved off, Taeyong shifts onto his right leg.

He knows their choreographer uses his authority to push them past their own limits to improve, but sometimes Taeyong feels so thin-skinned he’d rather quit his job than have one more harsh word dealt towards him.

Taeyong’s eyes come across more of the members through the floor-to-ceiling mirrors. Exhausted, flushed faces stare back at him, bodies stopping sluggishly at the yell.

This is the third time he’s messed up this part when they’re in a stage they’re doing full-song repetitions for detail work. This isn't where they should still be making mistakes. Everyone else has got their part down pat- but Taeyong, he- he’s the reason everyone’s getting frustrated, especially their teacher, who loves to let it out on them.

Nervous energy has his hand shaking, and he clenches it tightly when he looks to their choreographer’s face. He feels like a fucking pitiful excuse of a leader and main dancer in the moment. 

“I can do it,” Taeyong says, emphasis on the ‘can’, because it’s not hard, the move; it’s just that his leg has been cramping since the second chorus and Taeyong is starting to get to that point he know he’ll cry if he’s talked to or provoked just the tiniest bit. The skin on his neck feels tight with heat of his shame, the pain of his cramp pulling up into his back. If his years in the performance industry have taught him anything, it is how to handle pain in silence.

“I’m not seeing it.” The teacher says, fixing Taeyong with a _look_. For multiple seconds his hard gaze doesn’t waver, waiting for Taeyong’s head to dip in an apology.

He does so, even if reluctantly, eyes catching on Yuta shaking his head and Jungwoo’s heaving chest through the mirror. They’re fucking exhausted and aren’t gonna get any better results if they aren’t allowed to have a break soon.

“I apologize. I will try harder,” he says, choice of words formal, even as he’d like to deliver a swift string of curse words against their teachers head.

“You ok?” Johnny asks, settling down next to Taeyong as soon as they’re released for a break.  
Johnny’s bag is next to Taeyong’s because they came to the practice together, and Taeyong _knew–_ knew that Johnny would push his pacifistic ass to comfort Taeyong, never able to stand members being upset, because it’s always him that has to pick up the shards of mentorship and responsibility when Taeyong fails to act as the pillar their group needs.

He _knew_ that Johnny’s empathy would happen, and even though he had dreaded the interaction, his body is quicker to respond than his brain. As if he’s one of pavlov’s dogs, his walls crumble as soon as Johnny’s attention is undivided toward him alone.

His nose begins to prickle, and his throat gets a little tight. Signs he knows as harbingers of beginning to cry. Everything _hurts_ , and _nothing_ is working out, the cramp isn’t stopping blasting pain through his nerve receptors— and if anyone’s gonna pay special attention to him right now, he’s gonna break like stale toast.

So Taeyong just nods, righting himself up again, annoyance taking over the reign of his derailed emotions quickly as he tries to gather himself.  
He can’t crouch down on his haunches, as the cramp returns immediately and he bites his front teeth onto each other forcibly. He can feel Johnny’s eyes on him, can see his face turned toward him in his peripheral. Taeyong knows he’s moving way too frantically right now, rummaging through his bag with his legs awkwardly extended. 

He looks a mess, but he _really_ isn’t up to hearing it from Johnny. His finger catches on a linoleum folder in the back of his backpack, and the pain couples and multiplies with annoyance. Where is his fucking pouch with— what is he looking for, actually—

“You need to rest.” Johnny says, voice low. Taeyong stops rummaging through his bag, exhaling harshly. Johnny does not mean to annoy, he knows that, and he knows that it’s real concern he’s hearing right now. But still, can’t Johnny think? Is he fucking stupid, all of a sudden? What is Taeyong to do with an advice so unroofed in reality.   
He scoffs, accompanied with a sharp shake of his head. Half at Johnny, half at his pouch that was behind the folder all this time.

“Yeah, _sure_ ,” he returns, knowing Johnny’s eyebrows will pull together in a frown. He doesn’t need to look to know that. “Will do that right after the promotions have ended.”

Johnny isn’t stupid, he knows that. Taeyong is confident in the fact Johnny knows that the promotions are set to begin in less than two weeks.   
Taeyong pulls out a little packet of magnesium, ripping it open with his teeth, sharply. He throws the little slip of packaging into his backpack, before tipping his head pack and pouring the powder straight into his mouth.

Johnny makes a noise in his throat, maybe it’s disgust, or surprise, Taeyong doesn’t know. Doesn’t care, either, except Johnny is holding his own water bottle into Taeyong’s direction when his head tips back down, so he pours water right behind it, giving the bottle back without a word. He’ll feel bad about it later, right now, it’s just a twinge of recognition that he’s acting foul when Johnny’s main intent is nothing evil.

Later. 

Taeyong wants to get this over with, get the move right, once, so their choreographer will shut up, and then— to be alone is the only thing he wants right now, actually. Not even in the dorm, just– alone. Anything would do, even the stiff couch in the recording room. He could just turn the lights off, pull his knees up and put his hands between his knees while trying not to think.

A bath would also be nice, but it’s basically impossible to get a bathroom for one-self for more than ten minutes in their dorm.

Mindless tunnel-vision takes over Taeyong for the rest of the practice. It’s barely more than an hour left. He loses the urge to cry, the annoyance, just pushing himself through one exerting movement that bleeds into the next.   
In the second run they do he finally hits the beats correctly, nearly biting through his tongue at the pain zapping through his body. His muscles feel set aflame, old aches layered over new ones that just make his body feel like it’s run on his teeth’s edge of desperation.   
The reward he gets for ignoring his members and his role to supervise their movements just as well as his own, is a satisfied clap on the shoulder, when they get one whole song right. “I knew you could do it.” Their teacher says, and Taeyong’s head dips in graceful thanks.

In the end it doesn't feel worth it. 

His bed is a welcome comfort, despite the ruckus he can hear the members cause in the living space. He doesn’t shower after the practice, just desperate to sink into his sheets, no matter the uncomfortable prickling itch of drying sweat down his back and the bends of his knees. He scrolls through YouTube, searching up something that’ll keep his mind running on white noise, so he doesn’t have to listen to twenty trains of thought railing through his brain at once. 

Time passes like that, Taeyong sluggishly letting his brain loop through videos, up until the door to his room opens with a creak.

“Sweetness, time to let it show again,” Johnny croons, peeking around the edge of the door. It’s _their_ room- why does he even act like that.

“Show what?” Taeyong returns. He taps the pause button on his dog saloon styling video.

“Your sweetness.” Johnny returns, walking to Taeyong’s bed and sitting down unfazed by Taeyong’s dismissive tone, moving Taeyong’s legs aside. He swings one knee up on the edge, and claps a hand down on Taeyong’s shin.

“Well,” Johnny sighs, and his chest moves with the exhalation.   
He looks good, Taeyong thinks, _really_ good. Not only because of the muscles, but because ever since then, there’s been something like a shift in the way Johnny carries himself. He’s never really wanted to stick out too much because of his height. Now, confidence makes a big difference in his poise, even just with Johnny sitting down on Taeyong’s bed, joggers pulled tight over his thighs. He looks like he’s finally stretched into his very fingertips in a way he fits into, and it makes Taeyong’s chest tight with proudness.

“The show you watched earlier this year just got updated on Netflix.”

“Which?”

“The one with the giant orgy.”

Taeyong’s brow furrows. Johnny laughs at the failed conversation.

“Sorry about earlier,” Taeyong mumbles, gaze back on his phone screen. It doesn’t matter, because he can see Johnny’s body shake with silent laughter at the end of his bed, like a big, dark presence. Nightmare fuel, in itself, but Taeyong wouldn’t mind keeping Johnny in his bed for a week. 

He vehemently denies himself from looking down between his held up phone and his body, where his line of sight ends up in Johnny. 

Johnny ducks his head down, tilting it sideways until he can look at Taeyong’s face from down below. 

“Like this you got a mighty double chin,” Johnny teases, and it makes a laugh snort out of Taeyong.

“Shut up, doofus,” says Taeyong, kicking against Johnny’s body; anything in reach.

“Cmon, apologize again.” Johnny prompts, eyes expectant. “You’re so cute when you admit to your own faults.”

A smirk is spread onto his face gratuitously. Taeyong always feels like Johnny is in on some kind of prank, that Taeyong doesn’t even know of, when he gets like this. When everything Taeyong does makes Johnny laugh like he predicted exactly that to happen.

“I already did—,” he whines, “Johnny don’t be like this.” Johnny’s hand tightens around Taeyong’s ankle, traveling up to his knee and down again. 

“C’mon. I’ve been inhaling your smelly feet for five minutes so you can unload.” Johnny says, applying pressure on his middle and pointer finger as he pulls them down along the sides of Taeyong’s shinbone in the middle. 

Taeyong muffles a low sound, “that’s on you,” he shifts a little. “Could’ve sat down anywhere.”

Johnny chuckles, only two short sounds of amusement, before he quiets again. 

Taeyong doesn’t think a lot in this moment. A little thought of having to charge his phone soon, but mostly just Johnny’s broad palm on his leg.  
Johnny does that a lot– somehow tunneling the static white noise of Taeyong’s brain into only feeling. 

The big shape at the foot of his bed hums in admission to Taeyong’s previous statement.

“Why? You want me to come up?” Johnny’s deep voice lilts, teeth glinting even with the low light.

“Do what you want,” Taeyong returns, removing his gaze from Johnny. With this thing they’ve been doing, everything feels like an invitation. And Taeyong, he– he feels like a pet; a new puppy. Because he _wants_ Johnny, all the time, always needy for affection when he can get it. Now that it’s okay to say the things he’s been thinking for some years, every moment is charged with something, every touch feels more meaningful than before.   
And the thoughts- yeah, they’re not new, they’re just _allowed_ now. And now it’s like a floodgate is burst open, that as soon as he’s close to Johnny he can barely think straight, all caught up in how the sleeves of his shirt pull tight over his arms, skin shifting over wired muscle.

 _You want me to come up?_ That just feels like an invitation, a proposition, a challenge? Whatever it is, it’s loaded so heavily with opportunistic promise that has the back of Taeyong’s neck prickling. _Yeah_ , Taeyong would like Johnny to come up, so he can bury his face between Johnny’s shoulder and his neck, or just have him close and finish watching the miniature poodle getting his fur cut together.

But just because he could say it, doesn’t mean Taeyong will. He’s got some decency left, and he feels stupid enough lusting after Johnny five hours a day. He doesn’t need Johnny to know that Taeyong hungers after him desperately. Should be enough to know that Taeyong doesn’t ever say no when Johnny initiates intimacy.

And that’s- that’s it, really. Taeyong gets just as lonely as everyone else, and getting pulled into a hug for 10 seconds just takes off the top half off of loneliness and anxiety. And Johnny cuts Taeyong’s cake perfectly- always does him just right. Just wraps his arms around his shoulders when Taeyong slings his arm in a loop around the taller man.  
Skin on skin contact packs a punch when you’re deprived of intimacy three days a week.

Johnny pushes his thumb along the string of muscles on his shin, eyes expectant when they lift up to Taeyong. Taeyong’s lids flutter at the sensation, thought process lapsing in a sluggish figure-eight as the old ache of tight strung muscles is pushed apart.

It’s— heavenly. Yet, he forces his eyes back open, the reminder about Johnny's questions ringing at the back of his mind like a lost cell phone muffled under sheets.

“It’s fine, you- you don't have to listen to me whine about nothing,” Taeyong’s voice does _not_ shake.

“That’s what I’m here for.” 

Simple, that's how Johnny says that, hands continuing their figure eights down the sides of his leg. Taeyong’s chest gets a little tight, constricting with feeling. 

“It’s just,-“ Taeyong stops, mind feeling like an endlessly turning watermill and he’s struggling to fill his bucket with a single sentence that will make sense; words strung together but none saying the right thing. “It gets a little much sometimes.” 

And that’s that. Decidedly, _that_ turns out to be very little when put into words, but Johnny hums in understanding. Taeyong can almost feel himself tear up again at the simple gesture of understanding. 

“That’s okay. Just gotta let it out sometimes,” his dark chocolate colored voice swims up from at Taeyong’s feet.   
Taeyong _doesn't_ deserve Johnny; he never judges, even when common sense switches out in Taeyong’s mind. He really doesn't deserve Johnny.

Up, and down, Johnny’s warm palm moves, dragging heavy lines between the stiff muscles of Taeyong’s leg. 

“Yeah,” his voice is an exhalation of stuffy air from his chest. “I know.”

Taeyong’s thought lapses, and soon he doesn’t do anything but feel the heavy warmth of touch. The video keeps playing, and the little poodle falls asleep with its chin propped up on the stylists’ hand. 

Taeyong’s lids feel heavy all by themselves, and he exhales so long he feels as folded as an empty milk carton. Johnny’s hand drags up into the muscles of his thigh that connect to his knee. Johnny makes a little sound when he avoids Taeyong’s knee, bruised up blue, and drags his fingers into the bend of his knee.   
Taeyong hums, eyes slipping lower, as the next video begins autoplaying. It’s another jingle-y tune that plays in the background, but it slips into a part of Taeyong’s brain that listens, but doesn’t compute.

Johnny tugs at his one leg, pulling Taeyong a little sideways as he slips between his legs, hands leaving one leg and a second later they’re on the leg previously further away. Taeyong makes a harrumphed sound when he’s tugged, his phone almost falling out of his hands, and mind slipping into awareness again. Johnny shush-es him, beginning at the arch of Taeyong’s foot again, pressing up as he moves to his knee. 

A sound of bliss pushes up inside Taeyong, when Johnny digs right into an ache in his thigh– it snaps like a rubber band into Taeyong’s nerves, before sizzling out in looseness. It feels so good- to just be beneath Johnny’s knowing hands, _and when did he even learn this?_

The urgency behind thought frays out behind barely formed letters, and his eyes slip shut. In turn, his lips part when Johnny drags his hand up from his knee to the inside of Taeyong’s thigh. Warmth fizzles through him, and he hums deeply. Johnny’s thumb follows a string of muscle up the warmest part, the skin dipping under Johnny’s deft fingers.

Ache pulls behind Johnny’s fingers as they press in knowingly, but it feels even better when it lessens like a ship pulling waves into water, before they smooth into the flat plane of before.  
Taeyong’s anger from before seems unreachable- untouchable, slipping away even further with each deep pull of muscle Johnny drags between. What’s better, the hand wrapped around Taeyong’s ankle, or the one pushing into Taeyong’s thigh, he doesn’t know. 

His leg is lifted, mattress moving as Johnny shifts forward. Taeyong groans with the strain of his leg being put on Johnny’s shoulder. Johnny shushes him lowly, hand a warm pool of heat in the bend of knee. His other slides up to his hip, tilting the one side upwards to relieve the ache a little. Taeyong’s adams apple jumps with a dry swallow, hands tightening around his phone.

Johnny slides closer, Taeyong’s legs jostling on his shoulder with the move. All his attention is on his thigh now, tightening his hands as he expertly presses them in and down along knots of muscle. Taeyong’s mind fizzles out of itself when Johnny’s fingers wrap around the entirety of his thighs, turning into itself to create a friction of skin on skin.   
Taeyong knows he’s scrawny in the muscle department- and his thighs don’t differ. It’s like god put as much meat as him as somebody needed to survive with the bare minimum, and said, _yeah, that’ll do._ Sometimes, he wishes he was built different- thick and strong like Johnny, tall as a seaside mountain, or Taeil, kind of stocky, but defined where need to be, _friend-shaped_ , Donghyuck had called Taeils body once. 

Taeyong knows that he is not friend shaped. He’s shaped like a project done by a middle schooler to create a human conscious-golem out of empty cereal boxes.

Taeyong fails to notice a embarrassing sound slipping past his lips when Johnny finds a particularly hurtful spot. The pain multiplies with Johnny’s pressing, and alleviates slowly after releasing pressure, ebbing away. 

Sharp stings of fingernails catching against his skin every now and then, preventing him from fully falling asleep. Still, his brain feeds sensation after sensation in, shredding through the filter that’s meant to convert feelings into words caught up in Johnny’s hands, his warm body heat radiating onto the back of his thigh. As if Johnny’s handling an everyday item, like his microphone, a few dext pushes of his thumb, handling Taeyong as if he knows exactly what to do; where to touch, where it hurts, where it aches. Taeyong can’t even think about talking anymore, but he feels understood nonetheless, he feels true. 

It feels like he’s floating, tethered only to the points Johnny touches him at, where he’s real. Everything else but them is little sparks, burnt out, as Taeyong’s mind slips into a state between wake and blissful, warm darkness.

His leg is lifted from Johnny’s shoulder, and his foot stretches with the white-buzz feeling of blood flowing into it again. The treatment repeats with the other leg, knuckles pushing into tense packets of muscle. Taeyong groans, heat sizzling through his nerves. His fingers feel numb and prickle like he’s buried into a cactus bed.

Johnny’s hands feel so nice- stripping the anxious tension beneath Taeyong’s skin away with each skilled down-push to his hips. A palm, warm and dry, curls under the soft skin in the bend of his knee, lifting his leg straight so the muscles of his calf tense. There, too, a knuckle pushes over hardened tendons and muscle under his skin.   
“ _Johnny_ ,” he almost sobs, toes curling with the strain and relief, Johnny manipulating his body like he’s playing piano.

“That good, huh?” Johnny murmurs, voice lilting in a way Taeyong knows means he’s speaking around a smile. Taeyong could swear he feels the reverberations shaking through his bones up to his chest. Johnny's hand drags down, down, to where his shorts have fallen down to the crux of his thighs. Taeyong feels as if Johnny’s hand lingers, there, a self indulgent sweep of fingers along the swell of where his ass begins, before pulling back up along the back of his thigh.  
Throat feeling tight and thick, his teeth grind against each other. 

“Yeah,” he grinds out, shortly. It sounds choked to his own ears.

Johnny’s chuckle sounds like a cats purr, chest-deep and pleased. For a moment, Taeyong entertains the idea of Johnny curled around him all night, big and warm and rumbling with silent laughter that comforts him into a slumber of two shared in one bed.

The mattress dips, Johnny’s hands leaving his skin, and Taeyong’s lids flutter open as Johnny moves up to his hip, clapping there gently. His phone is taken out of his hands, and Taeyong’s hands fall to his chest like deadweight.  
“Let me do your back,” Johnny says next, and rolls Taeyong over easily, who moves with the motility of a sack of rice. 

Johnny swings a leg over Taeyong nonchalantly, pushing Taeyong’s loose shirt upward as he takes place on the backs of Taeyong’s thighs. Taeyong makes a displeased yet noncommittal noise, pulling his hands underneath his face as he turns sideways. His lids feel like deadweight, barely able to stay open.

Johnny takes a second just to stare, at the dips besides Taeyong’s spine, the way it tapers into his waist. Johnny knows how his hands look spanned around the width of it, and how much give there is to the small of Taeyong’s back when he presses for it.

It’s been kind of inevitable, Johnny knows, for him not to fall in love desperately with Taeyong.

He’s realized that sometime between cherry bomb era and the third time they hooked up. Somewhere between his hands leaving bruises on Taeyong’s thighs and halfway to messily, slowly making out until they’re both asleep. Must’ve been then. Or maybe it was two hours after Taeyong ruined Johnny’s shark plushie after running it in the hot cycle.  
Maybe it was at the wedding of Taeyong’s sister, or maybe it was the day of Taeyong’s graduation. 

Johnny, often, moved between sheets of his bed, or sandwiched between his members, _wishes_. He wishes Taeyong could return his love fully, for just a day; just so Johnny could get over it, maybe. Just so the hunger he feels could finally be satiated, or just alleviated. 

But love can’t be forced; he can’t make Taeyong love him. He can’t do more than what he’s already doing: let his whole world revolve around Taeyong the moment he asks for it.

Johnny would give an organ for each of his friends, has them dear to him to the extent of family, they are the siblings he never had. He hates them in that way, loves them for it even more.

Johnny _wishes_. Wishes that he could love in moderation, not in the only way he seems to know, the head-over-heels, to-the-point-of-invention, more-ache-than-butterflies kind of love.

For now, there’s a difference of heat between his palm and Taeyong’s skin that he’s got to work on. 

He makes a displeased sound at the resistance of knotted muscle under his hands, and what feels like less than half a fingers width between Taeyong’s ribs and his skin when his hands sweep over his torso. Muscles contract, jumping beneath his touch.  
Like the muscles besides the shinbone, Johnny’s fingers press in and drag upwards along Taeyong’s spine. He passes each knob where a pair of ribs belong, making sure to apply pressure, smiling when it makes Taeyong release little sounds.

Spread out, his two hands have the same width as Taeyong’s chest. Like this, Taeyong looks so small, so fragile beneath him- like he’s something to be protected. 

But then again, Johnny tapers down his kind of senseless urges, knowing that the body aches are gained by Taeyong’s perilous strength. That he’s one of the strongest in their team, not just by body, but by his endless persistence, too.

It is bound to leave some pains to be soothed. And Johnny is willing to be the balm and the balmer, soothe aches in any way he can. 

His hands travel slowly upward, past the wings of Taeyong’s shoulder blades, angular and sharp, up into the thickness of his neck. Muscles close there, wired and grounded in hardened packets under Taeyong’s skin. 

Johnny’s brow pulls inward, and he digs his thumbs, almost harshly, into the spaces upwards of Taeyong’s shoulder blades. He knows this must be one of the most painful places, because Taeyong’s muscles contract, and what little he can see of his face pulls together unpleasantly.   
Johnny explores this, roughly but expertly, feeling the muscle soften slowly beneath his hands. Up, up, he his fingers go, pushing along the higher part of Taeyong’s spine, where his shoulders taper into his neck. He digs his fingers in there, the sides of his nape, pushing the flat of his palm from the base up to the first extenders of the skull.

Underneath pressure, Taeyong goes liquid. Exhaling once, long and deep, all tension seems to seep out of him. 

“You good?” Johnny asks, breath hot and warm as it hits against the goosebumped surface of Taeyong’s skin. Has Johnny’s voice always been this low? Resonating inside Taeyong like waves against the shore, dousing him in blissful, languorous shivers down to his toes.

He doesn’t know what he answers, or if he does at all, but Johnny is shaking with laughter again nonetheless, smoothing a big, warm palm down Taeyong. A noise rumbles up his chest, but he can’t even form a whole sentence to answer, the words clouded behind a shroud of his brain slipping away.

“Did I break you?” Johnny murmurs, “have you turned into a cat?” He doesn’t ever stop finding Taeyong amusing, apparently, as he breathes out through his nose. Taeyong makes a sound that’s supposed to be a meow, but ends up a gurgled mess.

Taeyong is hot.

He wakes to his alarm clock blinking that it’s past two am, even though the last number changes twice while he tries to get his eyes focused, his mind slow molasses.  
He feels around his bed for his phone, his arm heavy as he pats around his bed. He feels like putty poured into a human shape, with a hole in the middle, as he’s so hungry he feels his stomach gurgle. His t-shirts neckline is damp with sweat, and he feels run over by a truck, pressed into dark, sticky dirt up to his nose. Not really a bad thing, it’s just that moving out of the horizontal is very difficult. He can’t find his phone, and he groans as a reason to care leaves his mind. So what he won’t wake by 6am for recording, he could just- just go back to sleep, because his dreams were warm and chocolate-y and he can still feel the edge of teeth pressed against his neck. 

His gaze catches on the shape of Johnny, somewhere between his plushies, snoring lightly.

He swings his legs over the edge of his bed, his pants shifting with the drag across fabric. Upon looking down, Taeyong’s cheeks color a little as his thighs are almost all the way exposed, the fabric still pushed up high to almost the crux of his thighs by Johnny’s work.

Funny is the feeling he’d choose to describe how it feels when the fabric falls down with standing up, moving against skin that feels more sensitive than usual. Johnny’s massage must’ve really driven his blood flow up, as he’s still warm, even without being covered with a blanket. More awake than previously, he now spots his phone on his bedside table behind his alarm clock, fully charged. There’s no urgent messages, so he slips it inside his pocket as he makes his way into their kitchen, quietly, so Johnny doesn’t wake.

Donghyuck looks up from his bowl as Taeyong enters the kitchen with a yawn so big it shakes him to his spine. He makes a pleased sound when he spots the leftovers of kimchi fried rice on the stove.

“Are you feeling better hyung?” Donghyuck asks, and Taeyong doesn’t think about how he had assumed nobody really noticed he was in a really bad mood during practice. The rice begins to sizzle in the hot pan, smell wafting into Taeyong’s nose and makes his stomach rumble even more.

“ _Yeah_ ,” he rushes out, voice breathy but emphasized. Taeyong’s legs still feel a little shaky, but it’s better than the strain of feeling like human organs strung on a stick figure made of electrical wire.

“Why are you eating just now?” He asks, and Donghyuck’s eyes turn google-y wide as his head dips to catch the milk dripping from his spoon, while trying to look back at Taeyong. 

“I was playing with Jeno,” Donghyuck says, purposefully looking back at his cereal. Taeyong is in a good mood, so he lets it slide that Donghyuck’s words implicate more than five hours of gaming. 

“You? Missed dinner too?” 

“Johnny turned me to jell-o,” he says as a way of explanation, and Donghyuck laughs a little. “Seriously, I just slept five hours through. Didn’t even mean to.”

“Aw man,” Donghyuck’s tone turns complainatory sour. “Johnny-hyung refuses to even touch me before I showered, let alone massage me.”

“Didn’t ask him to do it,” Taeyong says, piling some kimchi-rice into his bowl before plopping it onto the table on the opposite of Donghyuck, slipping onto the stool. “He just did. I’m not complaining.”

“Yeah, I guess it has its perks to be Johnny’s favorite,” Donghyuck hums, eyes already back on his phone. 

Taeyong’s eyes snap to Donghyuck’s face, searching for implication of negativity. He doesn't find any, and as his words begin to sink in, Taeyong feels like he’s fifteen again.

But he doesn’t let it show, instead, he takes on a berating tone. “Yah, Donghyuck, don’t be like that. What do you even mean by that, no one’s got favorites here.”

Donghyuck snorts. “Why do I feel like nobody ever told that to Yuta-hyung.”

He shoves another spoon into his mouth, and after crossing Taeyong’s unamused gaze, he speaks again.

“I’m not saying Johnny’s doing favoritism. It’s just- _like_ \- Mark is Johnny’s favorite to make laugh, I’m his favorite to play games with, Doyoung the one he always takes to coffee shops when they wanna be boring and old, and you— you’re just his favorite. Just like I’m Taeil’s favorite,” he tacks a short _heh_ at the end of that. Proud of himself.

Taeyong’s chest feels filled with fizzy soda-drink. He feels like falling down on the floor and hugging himself and giggling deranged.

“That’s not true.” 

“Idiot,” Taeyong thinks he hears Donghyuck snort into his cereal. But as soon as he fixes an angry more-eyebrow-than-eye-stare up at Donghyuck, the younger boy lifts his eyes from his phone, wide and innocent, like he’s never committed a single bad thing in his life.

  
… 

There’s a part in the intro, where they’re meant to fake a fight- two groups crashing against each other before pushing each other away- where Taeyong and Johnny are meant to do just exactly that. 

It’s just a rehearsal, just meant for the camera directors to plan where they’ll be for the real performance, where the best shots are, which angle captures the impact best.

It’s just a rehearsal. Which means they don’t need to give their all in the choreography, just dance where they’ll be later on, move according to formations.

Taeyong must’ve missed that memo. He’s all-out as always, all expressive eyebrows and over the top expressions while they perform.

During the part in question, Taeyong comes close enough for their belt-buckles to clank, his hands coming against Johnny’s chest- and all while this Taeyong commits to the scene; head tilted up, cocky expression on his face and gait full of swagger. 

All of that, up until Johnny closes a hand around Taeyong’s wrist, circling around the entirety of it smoothly, the nail of his pointer catching against his thumb. It prolongs the movement of step close-push-yank apart. It creates a sequence of Taeyong stepping near-hands brandished on Johnny’s chest-before being pulled even closer-and then away.   
There, Johnny’s eyes catch on a crack of Taeyong’s cool facade: that the confidence slips clean off, his eyes widening when Johnny pulls him closer bodily, before pushing him away. Backwards, his foot catches against the other, and there’s a stumble, almost unnoticeable as a mistake when they are told to act like it’s a real confrontation. But, Lee Taeyong, golden boy of the stage, he _doesn’t_ make mistakes. His dna is just wired differently concerning dance, because since debut, Johnny can’t recall Taeyong ever mistaking their choreography. 

Taeyong’s eyes stay open, a little bit stunned, instead of the shuttered come-hither expression of before. His arms swing with the steps backward, as there’s a little lull in the choreography for Johnny, and he’s got nothing better to do than to watch Taeyong. While stepping to his position, Taeyong’s hand reaches for his own wrist, rubbing over it while he turns it, eyes catching Johnny’s fleetingly. 

Did he hurt him? Johnny is confused with the shift of Taeyong’s emotions. As a bystander, it’s hard to read what goes on behind the pretty facade of his face, and it’s a little hurt of a reminder that sometimes Johnny doesn’t know Taeyong at all.

The producer calls them off, thanking for their hard work. The members jog off the stage, Jaehyun complaining about his hunger being so serious he’ll die within the next fifteen minutes. Johnny’s and Taeyong’s gaze clash, once, but they don’t talk as they return to their waiting room.

There’s a short break, the stylists bustling around as the members change for the actual stage outfits. Johnny gets a vest today, which is nice. Means that he can drink as much water as he want, not having to worry about his abs looking undefined.

“Who ordered a McRib?” Doyoung asks, loudly, into the room. Johnny looks up from his phone, eyes searching. Had they already ordered food? If so, he hadn’t been asked at all what he wanted.

But instead his eyes find Doyoung, who’s pulling and tearing at Taeyong to hold him like an item offered at the pickup counter. “A McRib!?” He crows again, grasping Taeyong’s torso.   
Taeyong is kicking and slapping, but he’s laughing nonetheless. And so are the staff members around them, and Mark anyways. Something all too familiar stirs within Johnny, and immediately annoyance flags up at the first tendrils of jealousy or want spreading. It’s stupid how possessive Taeyong makes him feel sometimes. It drives a wrench between what he wants himself to be and what he truly is; and Taeyong’s the catalyst.  
It’s hard to tell those feeling apart on some days, jealousy and want, because in the end they’re just another facet of the hunger he’s had for months.

Taeyong kicks Doyoung shin for good measure, and pushes him when the dark haired boy hops on one leg, clutching his other one.

Johnny smiles too, but it’s not as vibrant as usual. Today he’s tired, and his stomach burns and his head feels stuffy. There’s time between schedules, but not ever more than an hour, which is a death sentence on days Johnny just feels like a dick.

He hasn’t talked much with Taeyong today, apart from the _when’s the van downstairs? And have you seen my white long-sleeve? Is that your protein bar on the counter?_

And he notices it, clearly, in the moment. There had been a strange moment, earlier, when he’d hugged both Donghyuck and Mark, their feet lifting up off the ground as they three were shaking with laughter. After he set them down, and Mark- _bless his sweet heart-_ had taken his thirty seconds per day to compliment the absolute shit out of Johnny’s muscle gain.

Somewhere there, Johnny had caught Taeyong’s gaze reflected through the stylists mirror, heavy with dark brown shadow. Taeyong’s eyebrows were furrowed, and Johnny felt a little self-conscious all of a sudden, before Taeyong’s eyes flick back to his own phone.

It’s been a lot of that— staring and looking weird and not being clear. Johnny hates when he can’t read Taeyong, whose stares have been odd and clouded and it doesn’t make sense. There’s nothing that is not normal, as it just flows into their day as usual.

He tries not to overthink as he’s called to the makeup counter himself.

  
There’s very little room in the music station waiting rooms, and Johnny does his best to push an assortment of bags to the sides when he’s done with makeup. Staffs have put a picnic-blanket on the floor for some members to catch up on some much needed sleep, as well as to eat. 

“You want kimbap?” Jaehyun asks, sitting next to Taeyong, who's got his cheeks already stuffed.

“Nah, thanks tho,” Johnny returns, pushing Yuta’s legs to the left to he’s got enough space for the length of his body. Yuta is fast asleep, and Johnny makes mental note to wake Yuta after his exercise so he can still catch a bathroom break before they’re called backstage.

He’s got another shirtless performance outfit, this time tied in the front, which is why he’s skipping sit-ups. He doesn’t really like putting his hands on the bare floor, but his mom and almost ten years of the sm-basement didn’t raise a coward, so he props his hands up and toes on the floor, and begins his pre-performance tightening work-out. It’s barely a workout, just meant to push his arms to definition before he steps in front of more than 20 cameras.

“ _Yeeeaaah_ ,” Jaehyun hollers, sounding kind of garbled with food. “Johnny- _Hyung_!” Johnny can’t laugh, because his whole body is strained with push-ups, so it’s just a harsh exhale through his nose that blows across some particles of dirt.

There’s a very specific flick of dirt almost perfectly centered beneath his face, and it takes up a lot of his concentration as his body dips low, and up again. Twenty with his hands underneath him, ten with his arms out from under his immediate body space.

His breath becomes shorter by the time he’s finished, and when Johnny eyes flick up, they cross with Taeyong’s. Johnny smiles, because that’s what they do, but Taeyong looks away again immediately, like he got caught doing something illegal.

“I think I want that kimbap after all,” Johnny says, now, with his body heating from exertion.

A second later, he’s got a half-eaten roll roughly pushed into his hand, and the mat jerks with Taeyong’s sudden rising. Two seconds later, Taeyong’s grabbed his phone and left the room.

“Ah, jeez, did you guys fight?” Yuta asks, groggy, because apparently he’s awake now. The mental note gets checked off.

“Not that I know of,” Johnny returns, eyebrows furrowed as he watches Taeyong’s tense shoulders. Slowly but now very surely, Johnny thinks he’s got a right to know what the fuck is going on.

He steps up as well, taking a bite of the kimbap before pushing it into Yuta’s hands, and follows Taeyong. He barely catches the swing of Taeyong’s arm backward, and yanks a little unkindly. Annoyance simmers much to thickly beneath his skin, and Taeyong’s furrowed brow does little to alleviate it. He pulls them into the next door by, which is another stage outfit storage slash changing room. They’re all already changed, so Johnny knows they’ve got at least _some_ time to themselves.

Johnny wraps his hand around Taeyong’s bicep again. His voice rushes out harsher than he intends it to. “Can you tell me what the fuck is going on with you?”

“No,” Taeyong says, eyes shifting away and back again. Flickering, unsurely. It’s a sign for Johnny to soften a little bit, but the words make annoyance flare. Why, no?

“I-“ Taeyong’s voice is unsure around the edges of it, “what do you—,”

“I don’t even know. What’s with the fucking looks today. If you’ve got a problem you’d know I want it cleared up front and first,” Johnny wants to crowd even further, wants Taeyong to finish it quickly and get this useless fight over with.   
He wants Taeyong honest, but the way the lightbulbs atop of them can barely catch Taeyong’s face anymore because of Johnny pushed into his space, tells him to back off. He feels like he’s way too imposing for the size of the squabble, but he still keeps his hand pushed against the wall beside Taeyong’s head, waiting for an answer.

“I—“ Taeyong’s eyes are wide, and look genuinely confused. “I don’t know.” 

Johnny’s eyes roll in dismissal. If Taeyong can behave that weirdly the whole day, he can explain why. Simple like that. Bare the circumstance, dish it out, clear it up. Taeyong takes another step back, coming in contact with the wall.

“I really don’t know what’s going on. Don’t laugh, Johnny– but you’re so different.”

Johnny, in the past quarter of his life, has changed very little. He does not think he’s had a great change of character or personality in the last three weeks all of a sudden.  
His dismissal is apparent, because before he can oppose Taeyong, Taeyong waves a shaky hand, starting to talk.

“Not bad, just-” he stutters on his words, like they're sticking to his teeth, “every time I look, I gotta do it twice. You’re like a different person out the corner of my eye. You know; _this_ –,” a hand tentatively comes around Johnny’s bicep.   
“This is a _lot_ , and new, too. Not bad, just feels like— twice as much Johnny as before,” Taeyong’s breath rushes out with the last part of the sentence, a bashful kind of laugh. “And it makes me— I don't know how to act all of a sudden, around you.”

Its difficult, listening to Taeyong’s half-finished and tacked-onto, overlapping sentences, but he gets the gist. Annoyance and anger drift away like discarded onion skins, but he still has the urge to strangle Taeyong, just a little, for his indecisive expression of feelings. If he just didn’t know how to act, he didn’t need to look at Johnny like he was mad all the time. But maybe that’s just his eyebrows, strong with expression. It’s easy to think Taeyong is frowning all the time.

He sighs, exhaling harshly. His head dips, momentarily looking away from Taeyong. He laughs, in disbelief at all the social cues Taeyong could have used to make this pan out any way other than it was today. Instead of avoiding him like the black plague just because Johnny’s muscle gain threw him off.

He shakes his head, still chuckling a little. Count on Taeyong to choke on his feelings rather than just tell Johnny.

Taeyong doesn’t really meet his eyes, instead on his own hand, that’s on Johnny’s shoulder. It slides down to Johnny’s bicep. Beautifully unsubtle. He laughs again, short wheezy inhales, in that typical Taeyong-way.  
“Like, I’ve been thinking of twenty ways how I could get on my knees just while getting my makeup done.” And that’s- _that’s_ a sure way to fry Johnny brain. 

The door has a lock from the inside- _thankfully_. He’s got Taeyong pushed against it by the next blink. 

“Fucking hell,” Johnny curses, shoving the heel of his palm against the bulge in Taeyong’s black stage outfit. “There’s like a different million ways you’ve gone about that differently.”

“I know—“ Taeyong whines, hip bucking forward into Johnny’s harsh grip. 

“I already know you’ve got a thing for strength, you were way too obvious about it last time we fucked,” he pushes Taeyong’s legs apart, “why be so weird about it now? I really thought you had a problem with me.”

“Because,” Taeyong’s nails dig crescent moons into Johnny's sore arm muscles. “Because it’s embarrassing when we’re not-“ 

_When we’re not fucking_ dies off into a moan before it’s fully spoken, but it’s clear as day to Johnny how that sentence would have ended.

“It’s not, sweetness,” Johnny pushes a hand into the back of Taeyong’s hair, where its barely long enough to get a grip on. He pulls back, relishing in the jerk of Taeyong's hips against his palm, pressed against the hardness in his pants. Taeyong’s eyes roll back as he does, Johnny's fingers tightening in his hair. He pushes his face into the pale expanse of Taeyong’s neck, inhaling deeply. “It’s really fucking hot.”

He pushes a hand into the loose jacket of Taeyong’s martial arts-inspired fit. Underneath the tightly bound bandage across his chest, brushing across Taeyong’s nipple. In return Taeyong whimpers, chest rising under Johnny’s hand. He does so again, flicking across it indulgently. Taeyong is sensitive there, more than most other places on his body, and he’s so obvious about the fact that he is, that even Doyoung uses it against him.

Johnny’s thigh shoves between Taeyong’s legs, shaky already with the strain of being spread. He spits onto his hand, Taeyong’s hips readily lifting off of the wall to accommodate Johnny’s hand in the back of his pants.

He fingers Taeyong, not really nicely, because their spit is the only lube they have. Two fingers deep into Taeyong’s body, he lets the smaller man ride back onto his fingers, forward onto his thigh as Taeyong quietens his sounds into Johnny’s bared arm next to his face. Taeyong shakes apart in his hold when he comes, Johnny clasping a hand over his mouth to muffle the throaty sandpaper moan that would’ve otherwise surely be heard on the hallway.

Later, in bed, he scrolls through the comments of the most recently uploaded fancam. Concerned, most fans talk about a particular moment Taeyong is on the sidelines. In the video, he pushes against the small of his back, his eyebrows pulling together at the twinge of pain he must’ve felt. 

Taeyong had assured him nothing hurt badly, so he’s not half as concerned as he should be. Rather, it’s the damned possessive joy that returns at a remainder of Johnny staying with Taeyong. He can’t leave hickeys on Taeyong- _he would_ , that’s for sure, if he could. 

“What are you watching?” Taeyong asks, coming out of the bathroom freshly showered. His hair yellow again with the toner washed out, hanging across his forehead. A flush is spread across his whole body, from what’s visible. A towel is slung around his waist.

“Monitoring a fancam,” Johnny answers, truthful but covered up with a little white lie.

“How’re you feeling?” Johnny asks, because he still needs the confirmation that he hadn’t hurt Taeyong after all. He may be a stupid mess when his blood is down in his pants, but concern and the need to have Taeyong happy and healthy returns surely.

“I’m good. Why?” Taeyong looks bemused for a second, returning to the mirror in his closet to spread moisturizer down to his neck.

“Just asking.”

  
  
… 

  
Taeyong has to pay for snacks. He whines about it, and almost chokes a smug Donghyuck to death over it. But he takes down everyone’s wish for sandwiches nonetheless, even all their staff, until the open note on his phone is as long as his lyric dumps.

“Johnny,” Taeyong asks, voice pulling Johnny’s name apart so the vowels are all turned cutely. _Ja-ni_ , he says. “Will you come with?”   
His eyes are bambi-big, and his left blue contact is shifted to one side. It makes him look a little crazy, but even looking like that, it’s enough to make Johnny’s stomach knot up. Every once in a while, when Taeyong turns to him in that specific way, and looks up at him, all pretty- Johnny feels a little like dying. In a good way; but also in a _god please stop making me suffer_ type of way. He nods, mutely.

In a sleeveless top, Johnny watches Taeyong’s shoulders sway left-up, right-down and vice versa while he pulls along. Johnny really likes Taeyong’s arms, likes the veins on his forearms, and the set of his shoulders. He likes that Taeyong looks small, petite, and all kinds of lovely, but that he doesn’t ever look weak, while he navigates the two of them through the hallways.  
Johnny has never seen inkigayo not busy, and they stop nearly every forty seconds to bow.

Johnny’s temple aches a little with every hour passing since his last coffee, and he’s already planning for the size he’s going to order.

He’s so transfixed on the play of muscles in Taeyong’s back that he only notices when they’ve reached the bottom of some staircase that Taeyong did not take them to the cafeteria. Instead, they’re on the last steps to some delivery entrance, ending in a lowly-lit concrete space. 

“Three tuna sandwiches, please,” says Johnny, to nobody in particular, since they’re definitely not where they’re supposed to be. Taeyong snorts, stepping close and pulling Johnny’s lapels toward him. Taeyong being one step higher up than Johnny puts them on one level of sight, which is unusual, but a welcome perspective for once.  
There’s a cattish curl around Taeyong’s lips, turning up at the corners like it does when Taeyong’s happy. Johnny thinks, _wow, I love your confidence_ , because it compliments Johnny’s addiction really well. Johnny likes when he doesn’t have to ask for things, instead it’s Taeyong comes first to initiate it.

“Here?” Johnny asks, unsure, because there is a door down here, he just doesn’t know how often it opens. 

“Yeah,” Taeyong answers, following Johnny’s eyes to the heavy door. “All the deliveries are made in the morning.”

“Huh,” Johnny hiccups. “How’d you know that?” 

“I just know.” Taeyong says, smile widening when Johnny’s hand slips around his waist easily. Did Taeyong learn this sort of behavior from Baekhyun? Johnny can’t recall this lazy confidence ever being present before, especially on their bumpy road of getting to know each others’ bodies. “Wanna know what else I know?”

Johnny scoffs our a laugh, because Taeyong looks so pleased with himself, probably because of his line delivery, and Johnny is reminded of Taeyong’s efforts of research into becoming a homme fatale. 

“I know that you, Seo Youngho,” Taeyong starts, and Johnny’s stomach takes a little dip of fear at the formal tone, then, until Taeyong continues, “You look really fucking good today.” 

Taeyong shakes his lapels, to emphasize his point. On the inside, Johnny’s heart feels like a rebound hammer, or one of those squeaky toys every variety show supplies. It squeaks around in there, somewhere behind his sixth rib.   
But of course he can’t just let a heart-touching moment be- and before the thoughts even fully formed, he jerks out another stupid joke.

“Sorry, but _are_ you looking at me? Because your left eye is kind of not talking to me here.” 

Taeyong groans, deflating a little, “Really? It’s been itching like crazy.” He pulls a finger over his closed lid, to alleviate some pain, maybe.  
“Stylist-noona already made me switch ‘em thrice today because they keep clashing with the clothes or hair.”

Johnny can understand the struggle there. Taeyong’s hair kind of looks like a mess, actually. His roots are tinted yellow and the ends are a grayish blue, slicked into a curved artwork that’s as stiff as concrete.   
It doesn’t look bad, because even like that Taeyong can sell it as if that’s the exact vision their stylist had. And he’d never actually oppose their stylists’ ideas, because that’s the fine print at the bottom of the ticket granting you to be the visual of the group.

Uneven hair-dye and crunchy ends, that’s the move, apparently.

Johnny hates the stench of bleach and the way it makes your nose and eyes itch and burn. He’d have quit idol-ship the second someone proposed to him the idea of quick-bleaching his roots every third day.

  
Thankfully, their stylist prefers him bland, apparently; because Taeyong’s the one donned with white-ish hair or any crazy color that’s based on bleaching the hair down to a tone-able color nearly every comeback. Johnny doesn’t really know if this is some sort of revenge-ploy by the head stylist, who must want Taeyong to be bald by the age of 28.  
Black- or dark brown suits Taeyong just as much, if not more, makes his eyes stand out, makes him look healthy and natural. _Healthy hair_ suits him, honestly, but that’s a thing that hasn’t been there since Taeyong debuted with hair white as snow, and the implications of seven rounds of bleach.

“Shouldn’t have dragged me here, then, cause if I’m catching the drift here right, your hair ain’t gonna please her when we’re done.”

Taeyong smiles, row on row of perfectly pearly teeth glinting. “Can’t a guy just want to make out with you when you’re looking like this?”

“No,” Johnny answers. “But _you_ can. Gladly, actually.”

Taeyong tastes like gum, and his lips have a slide that’s usually not there when Johnny presses his lips onto them. Must be some kind of lip product already smeared on Taeyong’s lips. “You taste like cherry,” he hums, pulling away only a hair's breadth. 

“Mh, I know,” Taeyong answers, voice gravelly and rough and Johnny _loves_ it, “hate the smell of it.”

“Lucky you,” Johnny laughs, barely, against Taeyong’s lips. “Won’t be there any longer when I’m through with you.”

Is that a promise? Johnny doesn’t really even know what he’s saying, only thinking that it feels so, so good to be able to pull Taeyong’s lithe body against his own from head to toe, and that there’s no better sound than the little ‘ah’s’ Taeyong makes when Johnny pushes a thigh between his legs, parting them easily and the height difference aiding in the perfect placement for Taeyong’s groin to push against Johnny. He presses Taeyong against the wall, awkwardly standing on two different steps.

Just because Johnny likes to hear Taeyong’s pleasure, he pulls away from the kiss, mouthing wetly along the sledge of Taeyong’s jaw. Briefly, he wonders if he’s messed up Taeyong’s makeup, but the thought quickly vanishes with Taeyong’s nails digging into his shoulder.   
Johnny’s barely tampers down the urge to suck deep red marks into Taeyong’s neck, thick and strong and all kinds of handsome. Taeyong does that, brings out the worst kinds of behavior out in Johnny, possessiveness and jealousy and emotions he can’t really give a name to. He drags his tongue over the side of Taeyong’s neck up to the joint of jaw and ear- where Taeyong almost always gets wound up like crazy.  
Almost surprised, Johnny realizes that it’s for once it’s missing the salty taste of sweat; like the times Johnny’s pulled Taeyong into various spaces during and after practice, when Taeyong’s fierce eyes and determination make it hard for Johnny to focus. It’s kind of therapeutic, in times like those, to have Taeyong a mess with Johnny’s hand shoved into his pants in the time it takes the others’ to get to the convenience and back. 

“Such a shame that I can’t put hickeys on you,” Johnny murmurs, and Taeyong nods. Agreeing, Johnny drags his teeth down the skin anyways, a promise of what _could_ be.

Taeyong keens, high and languid, with the scrape of teeth over the most sensitive parts of his neck, head falling back against the wall. The way they’re pressed against each other, Johnny is dipped low, hunched down just to get his mouth to Taeyong’s clavicle.   
And yet- and yet Taeyong’s still pressed entirely against the wall, caged in by the box of Johnny’s shoulders and a forearm pressed against the wall next to him.  
Johnny bites down, lightly, or maybe just as hard as he can without leaving a permanent mark (Johnny’s got that figured out by now) and fire burns hotly down into Taeyong’s stomach as his head lolls to the side, sizzling up his spine and breath shortening. He, too, kind of bemoans the fact Johnny can’t suck as hard as he wants to, he would kind of like a pleasant bruise.

When his eyes flutter open again, he’s just inches away from the arm Johnny’s got pushed against the wall. Taeyong’s gaze travels sluggishly, from a thick forearm to the corded muscle bunching down from Johnny’s shoulder. God, Johnny will be the fucking death of him. Johnny’s other hands slips around to the small of Taeyong’s back, tips of his fingers slipping underneath the waistband of Taeyong’s pants, applying pressure and pushing Taeyong’s hips the short breath of distance down onto his thick thigh. The width alone of it has got the smaller man's thighs pressed apart to accommodate Johnny.   
The rough movement of pulling Taeyong close jerks through the line of Johnny’s shoulders, and when he moves his arm next to Taeyong upwards, his biceps pulls into an oblong, skin and veins shifting, and it- it makes Taeyong’s mouth real fucking dry. The strength Johnny is just wielding around daily like it’s nothing, it- Taeyong likes it a lot. Or rather, Taeyong’s cock, that responds to the lone sight of Johnny’s bicep like a carrot dangled in front of his face.   
Just the intrusive thought of Johnny manhandling him how he’d like, push him up against the wall— Taeyong chokes on a whine.  
  
God, Johnny will be the fucking death of him.

Taeyong plants a hand on the muscle, squeezing into the meat of it. Johnny makes a sound of acknowledgement, lips halting in their drag across Taeyong’s collarbone.

“When,” Taeyong breathes, eyes opening when Johnny’s face pulls back from his neck, “did you get so fucking broad?”

“I’ve always been bigger than you,” Johnny retorts, and Taeyong’s eyes roll quickly in dismissal. 

“ _Duh_. What an achievement.”

A hand unzips Johnny’s pants, and Taeyong pulls away from the quick kiss he’d planted to spit into his hand, before shoving it right down the front of Johnny’s pants. He pushes the heel of his palm across the length of Johnny's cock, quickly hardening in his palm. His fingers overlap around the thickness only barely, even tightening into a ring around Johnny’s hardness.

“Good lord,” Johnny laughs, hips twitching forward when Taeyong wraps deft, confident fingers around his stiff length. “When did you turn this damn nasty?”

Taeyong only smiles, triumphant and proud, before his other hand knots into Johnny’s hair to pull him back into a kiss. It’s not really a push-and-pull, barely coordinated in any way, but the way their teeth clack against each other feels kind of exactly right.  
  
Johnny doesn’t know what rides him in that moment, but he lowers himself, hands slipping onto the underside of Taeyong’s thighs, and then he lifts him against the wall, Taeyong’s legs clenching around his waist and hand tightening around his cock painfully.

And Taeyong— he’s _gone_. And within seconds, so is his confident, in-charge poise. A squeak of surprise had slipped out at the first action, only to channel into a drawn-out whine when Johnny’s got him pinned between himself and the wall. 

His thigh pushes along Taeyong’s center, his bulge right at where Johnny’s presses his thick thigh.

His hands are on Taeyong’s ass-cheeks, where thigh swells outward, and he applies just a little pressure, pulling just _that_ much. Taeyong moans when he realizes Johnny is subtly cleaving him open. “Fuck-“ he pants, in english, and Johnny laughs. 

“Seriously? When did you get so bold?” 

“Why? You scared?” Taeyong counters, not really meaning it but pushing nonetheless.

“No, I love it,” Johnny says, and that’s true.

Taeyong’s voice gets breathier with each shove, until it’s a steady stream of desperate little noises pushing past the borders of his lips. Johnny can just pull Taeyong’s hips against his own in any intensity he wants, and it’s when Taeyong’s head smacks back against the wall, hand useless and slack inside Johnny’s pants, so gone in pleasure, that Johnny slows.

“We should stop,” Johnny pants. 

“Why,” Taeyong returns, looking genuinely confused, eyes wide and shiny.

“You ok with coming in your pants? I don’t have a change with me,” Johnny responds.

“I have.”

Taeyong doesn't answer to the rest verbally. Instead, his arm tightens around Johnny’s shoulder, his body tensing to roll against the front of Johnny, ass dragging across Johnny's thigh. Once, slowly.

That’s answer enough.

Roughly, Johnny assists Taeyong rolling down onto his thigh, the smaller dancer’s legs tight around his waist. Taeyong tries to focus on jacking Johnny off as well, but it’s clear his mind is too frazzled with the chase of pleasure to do anything else.

Taeyong’s eyes roll back as he comes, Johnny barely catches sight of it, and then he punches down a sound so guttural Johnny would be embarrassed in any other context. Two kisses later, and Taeyong’s hand is out of his pants, and Taeyong’s body out of his grip.   
Instead of being on eye-sight, two darkly lined eyes suddenly are hip-height, and his pants are pushed down just enough for Taeyong to get his mouth on Johnny’s cock. 

“Jesus!—“ Johnny pants, thrown for a loop here because he’s definitely missing the normal blood flow to his brain. “Sweetheart, you don’t have to-,”

He doesn’t finish that sentence properly. Instead, the end of it gets shredded between an embarrassing moan he lets out when Taeyong takes nearly half of him down to start right with. 

There’s glitter on Taeyong's eyelids- was that there before? How come Johnny only notices now, when Taeyong’s lids flutter low as he works his mouth on Johnny’s cock. Tons of product make it impossible for Johnny to twist his fingers into Taeyong’s hair, but he desperately wishes he could– 

Taeyong does just as well without him. His tongue sweeps around the head, curling on the underside as he pushes himself down as far as he can go. 

“Oh, oh my, _shit_ ,” Johnny grunts, watching Taeyong. The sight of his pink little lips spread around his cock, cupids bow still defined and cute– even Taeyong’s eyes, closed as his lashes sweep over his cheeks- it does just as much damage to Johnny’s brain function as the sensation of Taeyong’s throat tightening.

It’s embarrassing, how the heat unfurls way to quickly when Taeyong’s eyes open, big and round and teary as he looks up to Johnny. His hand twists on the part he can’t reach with his mouth, knees shifting on the uneven ground. 

Johnny comes, choking on a moan, head slamming against the wall as his cock spurts come down Taeyong’s throat.

Shamelessly, Taeyong lets himself be pulled into a messy kiss, Johnny’s tongue turning against the inside of his cheek. 

“There,” Johnny jokes, weakly. “All cherry taste is gone.”

Taeyong laughs, zipping Johnny’s pants up. Johnny’s still got to adjust himself, way too sensitive still.

“Hungry?” Taeyong asks, happily, as if he's not got some shiny residue of cum still left on his lips. Johnny’s brain stutters into the usual turntable of emotion as it repeats the same phrase over and over. _I love you, i love you i lov–_

“Not anymore.” The joke falls flat. Taeyong rolls his eyes.

Johnny’s head is still reeling, even as Taeyong orders over twenty-five sandwiches, thanking kindly, and handing Johnny two deli bags to carry. He wonders, briefly, if the worker Taeyong greets so warmly could even fathom how twisted Taeyong really is.

“Jesus, what took so long,” Jaehyun complains, tugging one bag out of Taeyong’s hand immediately to look inside.

“We went to the vending machine,” Taeyong explains, easily, “got some coffee for Johnny.”

Sitting down to eat, he’s watching Taeyong do the same, biting down on a tuna sandwich and entertaining the question of what Taeyong’s kiss would taste like now, with cum and food— it makes him feel the worst kind of disgusting.

In passing, Johnny hears one of the make-up artists ask what product is on Taeyong’s lips, and if she can use it for Jungwoo as well.

… 

  
“Confidence!” Donghyuck crows, taking reactions onto his own part in his momentary role as MC.

“That’s Yuta!” Jungwoo cheers, lifting off of his seat to gesture wildly.

“Or Johnny?” Taeyong throws in, “I feel like he likes brash people.”

He says that, only turning his head once at the beginning, when he points upward to where Johnny is seated one step of the two-seat above him. _What? No, he doesn’t._ Johnny doesn’t have a single clue where Taeyong might have gotten that idea.

Johnny shakes his head and his hand in denial, but he doesn’t even manage to say something before the assortment of opinions of their team members rises up again.

“Johnny? No, not our Johnny,” Yuta laughs. “I know who this is– it’s Jaehyun. Johnny goes crazy for cute stuff.”

“Jaehyun?” Donghyuck turns his eyes to Jaehyun, who laughs and nods. 

“Yes, that’s me–,”

“Another point for Yuta!” Donghyuck interrupts loudly, and Yuta cheers accordingly, even as Taeil loudly begins protesting that _he said that first_. Donghyuck waves him off nonchalantly, making Mark laugh loudly, as he goes to hand Yuta another sticker that Yuta slaps onto his already sticker-ridden chest proudly.

“Please elaborate on what you mean with confidence,” Donghyuck prompts, waving an arm to invite Jaehyun to speak.

“Well, there’s not much to say. I just like it when girls know how to present themselves and aren’t shy.” 

After the according reaction given by the members, Jaehyun is next to remove one of the taped over fields of answers to the same question. 

They run through a handful of answers, and Johnny genuinely has fun, almost falling off of his chair when Taeils ideal type is revealed to be sexy. But at one point, Johnny is worried that his answer might’ve been removed.

Jungwoo almost knocks down the board off its little rickety chair when peeling off a particularly sticky note, before reading it to himself.   
Instead of voicing it out loud, he laughs, a hand pressing into his own stomach as he doubles over. 

“There’s just three people left, but this answer— ahh, I can’t believe it’s either of them.” 

The only other person left besides Johnny is Doyoung. Or so he thought. 

“Ideal type: someone who likes me just as much as I like them.” Jungwoo reads again, this time aloud. Confused, Johnny watches Taeyong shyly raise his hand as Taeil, sure of it, crows the leader's name.

 _Huh_ , Johnny thinks cynically, what beautiful irony. _You’ve got half of that already._

“Taeyongie, you’ve got me. I hate you just as much as you hate me,” Donghyuck smiles, pursing his lips in a mock-kiss as he gestures for Taeyong to come forward.

Taeyong begins to thumb one of the two remaining stickers off, and despite Johnny’s intention not to, his heartbeat begins thumping loudly. He knows his answer was one barely even connectable to Taeyong, but he wonders— if Taeyong will _know_.

Taeyong’s eyes are unsure when he begins to read the text. They hold Johnny’s once, for barely more than a second. His ears are as red as cherries when he reads it aloud.

Groans of the members sound into the white room they record in, and somebody boo’s.

“As expected, of our romantic Johnny-hyung,” Donghyuck sing-songs, in a tone that’s meant to tease.

  
  
… 

“I mean ’nice smile’, really?” Taeil jeers, eyes rolling with the word as if it’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard.  
“ _I_ at least said something honest,” Taeil insists, eyes wide as he shakes his finger at Mark. “What’s your _real_ ideal type, say it right now, honestly!” 

“Why,” Mark complains, tone pulled out into affrontement. “You know what my ideal type is anyway.”

“I bet it’s Jennie,” Jungwoo murmurs. The yellow-y low light of the bar catch on his glass as he lifts it to his mouth. “Or maybe Taemin.”

“Okay, _so?_ ” Mark defends himself, eyebrows rising with every agitated word he lets out. “But why, _why_ are you targeting me when Johnny’s answer was just as dodgy!”

Donghyuck laughs with a cackle. 

Mark launches back into arguing, finger wilding pointing. “Why is ‘nice smile’ fake, but Johnny can just say ‘ _kind_ ’ and get away with it?!”

“Because I believe him that he’s really not that shallow!” Taeil reiterates, making Jungwoo laugh with his sudden attack on Mark’s morale.

“Ok, when I answer real honest, _you_ gotta say it next-,” Mark insists, pointing at Johnny across the table while fixing Taeil with a stare. “Because _I_ know Johnny-hyung actually _is_ that shallow.”

“Sure,” Johnny smiles, pulling an expression like it’s nothing, tipping his head and glass a little sideways shortly.

“Ooh, _cool_ ,” Taeyong compliments.

Mark pats a sweaty palm down on the table. “I think Yeri is pretty.”

“Yeri, as expected,” Yuta cackles falling into the conversation, sing-songing into his next words, “Mark likes her so much.”

Johnny laughs, too, at the sly way Yuta’s eyes squeeze close, and cackling impishly. 

He lets his gaze move along the knee-height table they sit at. Once again in their favored restaurant, just without Doyoung and Jaehyun, this time. Taeyong is flushed entirely down his neck, red even where his t-shirt collar starts, and yet he still looks determined to drink more. He shakes his empty cup in Taeil’s direction, pouting and shoulders bouncing cutely.  
He gets cute when he’s drunk. Sloppy, too, kind of a mess, but very dear in the entirety of it. 

“Taeil, he’s drunk enough,” Johnny admonishes, seldom in righting Taeils act. Taeil harrumphs, pulling back the soju bottle he was going to empty in Taeyong’s cup, pouting.

“But he’s so cute when he’s drunk.” 

Johnny knows that Taeil loves it when Taeyong gets like that, and almost always it’s Taeil who pours the second drink into Taeyong’s cup. Taeyong just needs attention to preen and blush and giggle into his hand, and Taeil loves indulging him in the evenings. Everyone, really.

“Yeah but another one will end with Taeyong vomiting down the dorms’ staircase again,” Yuta argues in, and Mark doubles over in laughter. 

“What? _What!_ When did that happen?” He rushes out, interrupted by his own giggles and eyebrows pulled into his hairline.

“ _Hey_ , hey— that was all Taeil’s fault.” Taeyong points a finger at the eldest, lips pushing out cutely in affrontement, “he made me chug way too much at the Halloween party.”

Johnny hums. He’d like to reach across the table, get the stubborn hair off of Taeyong’s forehead. “Everyone has made their experience with alcohol.”

“Don’t distract! From the main issue here!” Taeil interrupts, “which is Johnny’s answer.”

Johnny sighs. “Kind isn’t enough, really?”

“Nope,” Donghyuck pops the P. “Say it exactly.”

Johnny looks down at the alcohol spinning in his cup. Alcohol, coupled with the friendly setting, erases hesitations about his opinion. Why not, right? He thinks to himself.

“Should I be really honest?” Johnny asks, gouging his friend’s reaction. Jungwoo nods eagerly. Taeyong doesn’t. Instead, he’s quieter, gaze heavy on Johnny. 

Johnny holds his eyes, gazes locked heavy and heady. He doesn't really think over what he’s going to say next.

“I like them without a bad bone in their body. Big eyes and body petite, smaller than me, and so dollishly pretty you can hardly believe they’re real.” 

“Yah, stop fucking around. You’re not like that,” Taeil argues, firm in his belief that Johnny is just one big teddy bear.

His comment falls on deaf ears. His sole focus is Taeyong, who looks bashful on the other side of the table. Taeyong’s head dips down, unable to Johnny’s eyes any longer. He gets up, a little jerkily, ears telltale and absolutely aflame, visible in even the dim lights. 

“Restroom,” he says, squeaky. 

“That’s not you at all, man,” Mark laughs, and Johnny tilts his head, making a sharp sound between teeth.

“Why do I have to be romantic all the time? I really just like ‘em pretty sometimes.”

“I mean, whoa,” Donghyuck slams his drink on the table. “Kind and generous sounded so boring I almost asleep during recording, but now this—“ he shakes a finger, eyes sly but appreciative. “You’re twisted, hyung.”

“ _I think we twisted,_ ” Jungwoo sing-songs.

Something in Johnny’s stomach sours at the first comment of _kind being boring._ Donghyuck has no way of knowing who Johnny was talking about, or the fact that there even was the idea of a specific person behind it- but defensive mechanisms lock in place immediately as he wants to defend Taeyong. 

“Johnny’s so romantic, imagine him in a relationship—“ Yuta laughs, slapping Mark’s arm. “Flowers and proposals everyday, man,”

Mark and Donghyuck laugh, entertaining the idea. Yuta chuckles, continuing on his imagination-journey. “Johnny would be so overbearing sometimes, though– especially if the other person ain’t as into it. Typical aquarius.”

Johnny falters in raising his drink. “Did I ask?” 

“Let’s not be assholes,” Taeil says, reminding everyone and Yuta lifts two defensive hands up.

Returning in just the right moment, Taeyong enters the room again. He’s still red, but now the front bangs are wet. Johnny wants to coo, that those few words were enough to have him cool himself off in the bathroom.  
  
Taeyong makes to step over Mark at the outer side of the table, and the younger boy leans back to make it possible.

“Yah, no, no,” Yuta raises his hands so Taeyong can’t pass by. “You go and make Johnny nice again,” he pats against Taeyong’s butt, sending him off. Taeyong’s gaze is a little confused, but his eyes crinkle up and he comes happily when Johnny extends an arm to pull him close. Damn Yuta’s big mouth but bless him for knowing how to fix it. He’s a little grumpy from Yuta’s comment, he’s not going to lie.

He gets a tumble of Taeyong into him, a knee pushed under his ribs as the smaller man settles like he’s got a heap of limbs too many. Put simply, Johnny’s drunk. And right now he can’t think of a lot of reasons why he shouldn’t pull Taeyong down on his lap.   
Taeyong grunts, hopping on the place to get his legs underneath him right, and Johnny laughs at the helpless manner Taeyong is functioning. 

“There we go,” Taeil states, motioning Johnny to reach his cup over so he can pour another one.

A hand next to Johnny rises, too, and he pushes it down into his lap self-explanatory. Taeyong huffs a _why_ into his shoulder, drawn out into a whine, but there’s no real protest. When Johnny’s head tilts back down from swallowing the soju Taeil poured, the warm body against his side shifts. Rough hair tickles below his chin as the crown of Taeyong’s head pushes into the space between shoulder and head. 

Every time Johnny breathes in, its Taeyong’s clean scent that he smells, instead of sour, stuffy air. It’s like a balm to a burn— the burn being any deflection pulling Johnny’s mind into anything other than Taeyong. 

  
“Did you mean it? Earlier-“ Taeyong asks, later, when they’re both getting ready for bed. Surprised, Johnny stops fiddling through his stack of clothes in search of his sleep-shirt. 

At his nonplussed gaze, Taeyong’s gaze falters a little. “That you like pretty things.” His body slinks into a movement as if he just remembers he should bust himself with anything but having to look at Johnny.

“Why? Are you jealous?” Johnny returns, teasing a little. It doesn't even really make sense to counter that in the context, but before he can even re-track and ask an actual question, Taeyong answers.

“A little,” Taeyong admits, though, murmured into his own clothes as he turns around to get ready for bed. 

Johnny stops entirely. That’s... unexpected. 

Unexpected, but very pleasant in its implications. Taeyong being jealous regarding Johnny sends a whole lot of nice feelings down his back, all implications, though, nothing set in stone.

“Of who? I didn’t even say anyone specifically,” he returns, eyes tracing the curve of Taeyong’s back as he pulls his own shirt off in a jagged motion. There’s a flush visible even from the back, one that burns down to Taeyong’s shoulder blades.   
It’s no secret that Taeyong is bad at holding his alcohol; that he’s a one-glass good mood, second-glass: asleep kind of guy. Within seconds, Taeyong has got another shirt pulled over his head. This one looser, smoother than the previous.

It’s when he’s tipsy that he _really_ lets loose of his ever present thought of composure and image. He’s developed to be not shy with their fans and the members most of the time, but it’s when his breath smells like sake that he’s uninhibited about his touches. Laughing uncontrollably, burying his flushed face in Johnny’s shoulder a second later.   
Johnny has learnt to appreciate those evenings, when it’s just— when they feel almost _real_. When he can wind an arm around Taeyong’s waist to have him lean against him, even pull him into his lap, and nobody bats an eye because it’s just Johnny taking care of their tipsy, lightweight leader.

Taeyong– whose cheeks stay flushed after just five sips in, who doesn’t hide his laughter behind his hand, and who lets his hand stay on Johnny’s thigh for minutes on end while everyone talks over another. 

“You used to be pretty adamant about Yoona being your ideal type,” Taeyong mutters. Turned away and forward over his from Johnny, stubbornly hiding his real expression.

It takes a moment to settle in, but all of a sudden, Johnny is filled with glee. Taeyong being jealous over absolutely nothing, shy of showing it, it’s just— it’s really fucking cute.

“Yong-ah,” he says, voice lighting teasingly. He moves across the space between their beds, coming to stand behind Taeyong. The shorter male looks over his shoulder once, petulant, and moves right back to tucking around his pillows uselessly.

For a second, Johnny lets himself enjoy the view of Taeyong bent over in front of him, before reaching a hand out to touch against his shoulder. Smoothing down his arm until he catches in the bend of Taeyong elbow, pulling gently.

“What? Taeyong prompts, letting himself be pulled up, but turning his face away quickly after meeting Johnny’s amused gaze.

The quick flash of bashful eyes is enough to make Johnny’s stomach feel all tingly and warm. A swoop of heat, too, always present when he’s got Taeyong’s body close to him in situations like these.

He pulls even more, until they’re back-to-front, and Johnny can move his other hand to Taeyong’s stomach. Taeyong has still got- or maybe again- a flush of rosy skin sticking to his neck. It doesn’t lessen with the Johnny’s large palm low on his stomach.   
A little push there, and Taeyong’s ass is pressed against Johnny’s hips.

“Mh,” he hums, laughing lowly. He murmurs his next words, letting his voice drip down like he rarely does. He feels and sees Taeyong breathe shallowly, like a trapped animal,— hears his breath shallow down and speed up when he speaks. 

“You’re real fucking cute, you know that?” Taeyong’s hand touches to Johnny's resting on his stomach. His fingers tighten around the back of Johnny’s neck, a breath shuddering out.

The pulse in Taeyong’s neck flutters visibly.

“Don’t make fun of me.” Taeyong pleads. His head dips down with a slight turn away from Johnny. 

Johnny tsk’s, his left hand reaching up to turn Taeyong’s face toward his. Thumb against the line of Taeyong’s chin, he can feel Taeyong’s pulse jackrabbit under his palm. 

Taeyong’s visible arousal- how affected he is by Johnny— it drives Johnny’s brain into the mud. 

Taeyong’s eyes don’t hold his own for very long, lashes sweeping above his cheeks in drawn out bows to an imaginary audience.

“If it’s any consolation, I think you’re the prettiest,” he continues, and watches as Taeyong exhales harshly, shoulders tensing up as breath shudders out. His shoulder blades wing out against Johnny’s chest. The strong canvas of Taeyong’s neck draws him in nearly as much as his lips do. Where he looks weakest, most vulnerable– is where he looks the most tempting.

“So pretty that my eyes are only on you,” he continues, touching his lips to Taeyong’s neck. It’s barely more than his breath hitting dampened, flushed skin; enough so it pushes a bow into Taeyong’s spine, as his stomach tenses but is held in place against Johnny‘s body by his own hand.

There’s something exhilarating about knowing how his actions affect a reaction in the smaller man- how his breath shortens, and his head tips sideways willingly, a little sound falling out of his slightly open mouth as Johnny drags his lips across his skin, uninhibited. His hand squeezes the unwavering presence of Johnny’s hand, large on his stomach, Taeyong’s fingers tightening in sequence.

“Always on you,” Johnny tacks on to his previous statement. His teeth catch against the edge of Taeyong’s jaw, continuing up to his temple. Johnny isn’t drunk anymore; but he can’t seem to hold on to his tongue– words too honest for being _friends that fuck_ just spilling out like pennies out a broken piggy bank.

“But do you know when I find you the prettiest?”

Taeyong shakes his head in a way that’s almost not noticeable. If it weren’t for his fingers on the edge of his throat, Johnny doubts the movement would’ve been there. Fingers tighten around his hand on Taeyong’s stomach.

“Prettiest when I got you like this, all splayed out, wrecked, _needy_. Prettiest when I make you come,” he presses the words against Taeyong’s skin more than anything else, but Taeyong shudders, a sound that’s almost a sob breaking out of him. 

“ _Nobody_ else can compare to you like that.”

He sags in Johnny’s arms, who for a moment in punched into alert. That’s before he realizes that the movement comes from Taeyong’s knees knocking into each other as his ass hitches back into Johnny’s broad form behind him, thighs pressed together. 

“Johnny—“ he says wetly, almost begs, and it sends molten lava down Johnny’s spine. “Please,” he adds, then, and melts Johnny’s brain right out of his ears. 

Because that’s wet dream material right there: how the word sounds, so sweet, from Taeyong’s lips, when he’s wrecked enough with just some filth murmured into his ear.  
  
Johnny’s still got some alcohol left in him, but even the buzz of alcohol is nothing compared to the surge of endorphins to his brain with how Taeyong makes him feel. In charge- maybe, but someone wanting you so desperately- to be the sole reason Taeyong’s is so needy right now— it’s so much better than alcohol. Being _needed_. 

It’s that thought that accompanies him as he tilts Taeyong’s face upward to meet his own mouth almost too roughly– if it wasn’t for the pleased groan he gets against his lips. Their teeth clack, tongues pushing against another, and Taeyong is just mouthing wetly into the corner of his lips, but it’s so good, nonetheless. Even better when he moves his hand on Taeyong’s jaw to press against it, thumb slotting under Taeyong’s cheekbone. Taeyong’s jaw gets a little slack, just letting himself be moved into the position Johnny wants him to go. Johnny’s blood fizzles in his veins as if Taeyong’s actions have carbonated the entirety of him.

They part for a breath to be pulled in by them both, audibly. Taeyong’s eyes are like molasses, glassy and low-lidded over their deep brown. Here, with the only light being the one filtering below their door; they’re pitch black, shuttered into facets of shadow even darker than the room around them. Johnny would be frightened of the emotions he sees there, somewhere between vague shapes and a shadowy reflection of his own face. 

Here, Johnny hesitates. 

He knows what he wants. He wants Taeyong with his hair messed up on his pillow, hand braced against his mouth, body shaking with trembles while he tries to quieten his moans— because that’s another thing that’s different when Taeyong is inebriated: it’s like he loses control of his mouth. And once riled up, he’s all punched out moans and breathy whines that he tries to muffle somehow because he just can’t _stop_. Johnny presses his hardness against Taeyong’s tailbone, groaning when the rush of pleasure makes him press another kiss against the damp skin of Taeyong’s neck. 

That’s what he wants, to have the other man out-wound, derailed and flushed beneath him, biting into Johnny’s shoulder to muffle his drawn-out moan when he comes. He wants his own hips pushed against the soft skin of Taeyong’s ass, and maybe a red shape of his hands remaining around Taeyong’s thigh until midnight.

But he won’t make that move. Because even if Johnny just found that it’s definitely one of his biggest turn-ons when he gets to make the decisions, he won’t be the one to make the decision of far they’ll take it.  
Granted, they’re both a little gone, so if Taeyong is fine with ending the night on a note of a heady make out sesh, that’s _perfectly_ fine by Johnny.

In the process of trying to piece together the right words to propose going to bed, Taeyong turns around in his arms, presses his lips on Johnny’s while he turns the two of them, and pushes Johnny down onto his bed gently.

And from then on, it’s made definitely clear to Johnny what Taeyong wants. 

“Baby boy,” he murmurs, looking up at the perfect mess atop of him. Taeyong’s eyes get wide at that and he halts, surprised. 

Then, slow on onset but impactful when it hits– He turns his face away, as if trying to hide into his own shoulder, fingers tightening on Johnny’s stomach. It takes a second for Johnny to recognize the reaction as embarrassment, and it makes him laugh a little as he moves Taeyong to look at him again.

“What? It’s true,” he chuckles, even as Taeyong whines in disagreement, thighs tightening. He looks so fucking _tiny_ on top of Johnny, dollishly pretty in his disheveled state. 

“Johnny, _you_ -,”

“I’m what?” He presses, enjoying Taeyong’s reluctance slipping in it’s steadfastness.

Taeyong sags, air huffing out. “You’re mean.” He says that like a compromise, so Johnny knows he’s just finding his easy way out.

He tuts, letting his hand come to rest against the base on Taeyong’s throat. His thumb sits on the skin just below the adams apple, fingers curled around his nape to the back of it. It’s harmless, but a promise nonetheless. Taeyong’s head tilts up a little as if on instinct, sucking in a shuddery breath. His eyes are lidded low, lashes heavy and dark, staring down at Johnny’s past his cheeks.

“What were you going to say?”

Taeyong, if even possible, gets even redder. All of a sudden, eyes can't even meet the periphery of Johnny’s ones. His hips drag across Johnny’s hardness in a slow figure-eight. Johnny lets his thumb sweep down, pressing into the notch below his jugular. His hand tightens, barely, and Taeyong’s pulse jackrabbits.

Johnny can feel his body responding to Taeyong’s ministrations, but for the time being, that's not what he wants. A clear, strong hand stops Taeyong’s hips from moving.

“Speak, sweetness.” Johnny says. It sounds harder than he intended to, but apparently that's the push Taeyong needed. He exhales, air shuddering out of him.

“I like it- that—,” Taeyong stutters, a hand moves from his chest and comes to Johnny’s bicep, faltering. Johnny does not let the fact that Taeyong responds to orders be the reason he’ll come in his pants. That'll be something for the next time he’s alone with his hand.

Taeyong’s eyes are big, searching, before his lids flutter low, frustrated that there’s no way of putting it _right_. “I can’t explain it, I just really like it, that— that you’re strong, and so much bigger than me- and it makes me feel–“ he stops again, looking at Johnny “–good, _fuzzy_.”

“I can see that you like it,” Johnny teases a little, but there’s honesty. Because he _can_ see it, can see it in the way Taeyong’s cheeks are flushed, fingers hesitant, how his words don’t come smoothly, because he always gets a little flustered, deliciously all-over-the-place when he’s turned on.   
Taeyong sighs a little exasperated at Johnny, face already closing off again a little, before Johnny interrupts. He rolls them over, hand catching against the back of the smaller man to make the impact on the mattress lower. This time his voice is hushed, personal as he speaks into the little air between them.   
“You know what? I like it, too. Feels really good to know you find me attractive-“

Taeyong’s eyebrows furrow, “I found you attractive before.”

And that brings a smile onto Johnny’s face, warmth in his chest. He’d hoped so, of course, but knowing that Taeyong found him attractive- bulked up and defined or not- it feels really good. 

“Thanks, baby,” he murmurs between a smile, leaning down to press his lips onto Taeyong’s. It’s warm, at first, like everything else between them, just Taeyong’s lips slotting between Johnny’s.

“I had hoped you like it. because I do-,” 

Johnny moves a hand down, dragging it along Taeyong’s thigh, until smoothing it to the underside of it. His hand spans there, enjoying the give of Taeyong beneath him, before pulling Taeyong’s leg up to go over Johnny’s lower body. It opens Taeyong’s body space even wider, and their hips slot together with the movement. Taeyong shudders, moaning into Johnny’s mouth.  
“I like that I can manhandle you around and you just let me. Makes me love it when I got my hands on you and you're already gone.”

Satisfied with Taeyong’s leg where it is, Johnny’s hand moves to Taeyong’s hip, tightening his fingers around the prominent bone. His lips twitch into a smile against Taeyong’s, as an idea of slight evilness comes to him.

He pulls away from the kiss, dragging his lips along Taeyong’s sharp jaw as the other shudders air into his lungs.

Johnny finishes his ministrations to Taeyong’s jaw, and pulls away a little, just to be able to get a good look. Most of his front weight is balanced on the arm propped up next to Taeyong’s head, and it gives a slight strain to his back that Johnny will ignore for now.  
Taeyong’s eyes flutter open as he senses Johnny moving out of his body space, and he’s about to say something— when Johnny’s hand, tight around his hip, thumb pressing into the sensitive area of his lower stomach, pulls his hip into a downward motion to meet a purposeful grind of Johnny’s groin.

Johnny isn’t disappointed. Holding Johnny’s gaze, Taeyong’s eyes widen first, his mouth falling open on a soundless note of a sharp inhale. But his whole body tightens, fingers pin-needling into his bicep, as air shudders out.

Johnny can’t help but do it again, grinding his hips down almost a bit too rough for them to still wear chafing underwear, but Taeyong is too pretty; too pliant, and his reactions give Johnny too much punch-drunk surge of power to stop now. 

“ _Ah_ ,” Taeyong breathes out, short and stopped by himself biting on his lower lip. He’s so fucking gorgeous, that’s what he is, _too_ fucking pretty for his own good. That’s what Johnny thinks as he watches Taeyong’s lips fall back open as he works his own hips down, chasing the feeling.   
Stupidly enough, it’s Taeyong's lips that get him the most, as he traces his face with his eyes, slick with spit from his kiss. Johnny loves Taeyong’s lips, especially his cupid’s bow, almost dollish in its perfection, and it gets even more prominent when Taeyong’s whole mouth is red from making out. It gets his lips puffy, especially when Taeyong tries to keep quiet and bites down on his lips.

“So cute,” he murmurs, unable to wipe the smirk off his face. Taeyong’s eyes meet his again, already lidded and glassy, pupils blown into a wide black. His chest shudders with each panted breath, and Johnny firmly believes if Taeyong wasn't already red all over, he’d see the others cheeks color at his words.

On a hunch, or maybe just out of pure curiosity, Johnny moves his hand down, to where Taeyong’s ass meets thigh, and that’s where he digs his fingers in. He grinds down again, this time murmuring lowly while he stares at Taeyong’s face, transfixed on what his reaction might be.

“And so desperate for it.”

“ _Johnny_ —,” Taeyong barely gets out, the sound thin and strangled, eyes squeezing closed. His body makes up for it, pressing up against Johnny as he arches up.

Taeyong’s thigh tightens against Johnny’s waist, almost unbearably hot where it presses Johnny’s shirt into his skin, as Taeyong keens into the kiss.   
This time, Taeyong’s lips already fall open before Johnny has his own pressed to them. Johnny himself moans at the feverish desperation Taeyong returns the kiss.

“Wan’ back on top,” he murmurs against Johnny’s lips, and Johnny agrees, turning them back to their first position. Taeyong’s elbow knocks against his chest with the motion and he _oof’s_ quietly.

Usually Taeyong keeps lube between the mattress and the wall, but as Johnny’s trying to find it without looking his hand uselessly scrabbles in the tight space. Accepting his defeat, Johnny just acts as if he finds what he was looking for, pulling it up- and just shows Taeyong a finger-heart instead. Taeyong laughs, scratchy like sandpaper, and his mouth curls up in the corner in that kitten-ish way. It sobers them both up somewhat, the thick-heady pleasure disappearing enough so they can breathe again.

“You get the lube,” Johnny instructs, kind of expectant of Taeyong’s reaction. Taeyong’s head tilts in confusion.

“W-why? Don’t you know better than me where it is?” That’s true, because Johnny is mostly the one using the lube. 

“Because I asked nicely?”

Taeyong’s eyebrows twitch in incredulity. “You barely did.”

“Okay.” Johnny commences, “I really want to watch you bend over. Is that clearer?”

Surprise paints itself onto Taeyong’s face quickly. He holds Johnny’s gaze, unsure, before his eyes dart to the crack between Johnny’s mattress and the wall.

It’s cute, how visible the moment is that Taeyong steels himself to set to action, and his lips purse a little, as he releases his hands from Johnny to lean forward.   
The reach tips Taeyong forward on his knees, past Johnny’s torso as he leans forward. He fumbles around between the space for a little, grasping nothing of importance, and his face turns over his shoulder in confusion. “Whe—?”

Before he can even finish the sentence, Johnny falls in. “Further up,” he says, feeling a little bit like his heart is going to beat out of his chest. There's a telltale buzzing under his skin, and an obvious stringy rigidity to Taeyong’s moves, as he knows he’s watched, hungrily.

Taeyong surmises that he can’t reach it with his hand propped up, arm extended, so he falls down onto one elbow, and it tips him even further forward. His back falls into an arch so naturally Johnny feels his mouth dry up within seconds. Another idea pops into his mind, and before he’s even finalized it, his hands have set in motion.

His palm cracks out a sound in the still air between them as it impacts across Taeyong’s ass. For a minuscule moment, Johnny doesn’t know what he just did, half in shock, and then Taeyong tips forward, body tensed before his top half is sent crumbling onto the mattress. A sound of the most sinful nature bleeds out of him, a surprised _ah!_ that melts into a keen, muffled as his face pushes into the mattress.

He shudders, thigh tensing and tightening around Johnny’s hips. 

“I- I don’t- I’m sorry?” Johnny stutters, thinking he fucked up majorly, except—   
  
Taeyong exhales harshly, pressing his face into the mattress. Johnny sees his fingers curling into the mattress as his body sags, sigh barely audible. He pushes himself up by his hands.

“Don’t be,” Taeyong breathes, slotting himself back into Johnny’s lap, grabbing Johnny’s hands and putting them on himself. “ _Really_ don’t be.”

If Johnny’s ever seen Taeyong wound-wound up, this would be it. He presses himself against Johnny with everything he can, hands rough in Johnny’s hair as their teeth clack. His hips push down with intention, in no real rhythm whatsoever; just to get himself off. 

He pushes Johnny down, roughly. Johnny winches as something sharp digs into the back of his shoulder.

Turns out the lube was underneath Taeyong’s sheets the whole time.

  
The lube squelches with an unpretty sound when Johnny presses a gratuitous amount of it onto his fingers. 

“You ready?”

“Yeah,” Taeyong nods, biting onto his lip right afterward when Johnny’s hand returns to his sore asscheek.

Johnny doesn't warm the lube up. Maybe because he’s an asshole (Taeyong’s says so), or maybe because it’s so cute when it makes Taeyong squeak with surprise, jostling against Johnny’s body to get away from the cold sensation. 

Taeyong already pressed against the hard wall of Johnny’s body, gives him no escape when Johnny applies pressure, his finger pushing in to the knuckle. Taeyong chokes on a noise, shoving his face into the crux of Johnny’s shoulder and neck, his arm wrapping around Johnny’s shoulders.

“ _Ah_ \- fuck,” he breathes, 

“C’mon, sweetness, ride it,” Johnny encourages. His gaze travels past lines of sleek muscle down Taeyong’s back, his face pressed to Johnny’s skin. Down, where his ass swells out, where he can see his finger disappear into his tiny leader. 

He lines another finger up quickly, enjoying the punched out cry he gets when he shoves those deep, without much kindness. Still, Taeyong takes his command to heart, sobbing as he pushes his hips back down on Johnny’s long fingers and he presses them down onto his prostate mercilessly. The sensation sends pleasure fizzing through his every nerve receptor, tears shooting into his eyes, precum wetting against Johnny’s hard abs.

He chases the sensation, his mouth falling open against Johnny’s neck as harshly exhaled sounds escape him with each of his little thrusts. Johnny seems to make it a sport to abuse his prostate, a chuckle resonating through Taeyong’s body where they are pressed together. Johnny's laugh tells Taeyong what he must look like— stupidly working his hips back onto Johnny's fingers, already crying and two hand-lengths away from cumming. Shame mixes in with arousal, but instead of tampering it down they flame up with each other, skin red on the back of his neck. He’s reminded of how helplessly sexy it made Taeyong feel when Johnny spanked him, and he already finds himself missing the pain as it subsides from his ass.

Johnny pulls his fingers out to pour more lube onto them. Taeyong likes it wet, he knows that. But he also knows it can’t be that easy to take Johnny without excessive lube- because, well, Taeyong is a whole lot smaller than Johnny while Johnny is… proportionate.

His fingers are out of Taeyong for only a few seconds, but Taeyong protests with a whine against his neck, face lifting from it’s prior place. 

He shakes his ass, feeling too cold and empty without anything to stuff him with. Johnny complies, his three fingers pushing in with resistance, slipping a little with the excessive wetness that drips down onto Johnny. 

Johnny loves the view he’s got down Taeyong’s back, watching his own fingers push into the tiny body pushing against his own. Taeyong’s ass cheek isn’t as red as before anymore, but it jiggles just as nicely when he digs his hand in and releases. Taeyong’s hips jump with it- and shove down onto his fingers. Taeyong’s spine bows, whimpering against his neck. His arms tighten, too, one hand scratching into Johnny’s shoulder blade.

 _Ride it_ , Johnny had said. _Ordered_. Taeyong rises and drops his hips onto Johnny’s fingers like he’s told to do and Johnny's groans into his ear, pleased. Taeyong feels heat spread at that alone, pleasing Johnny, making him proud. The tips of Johnny’s nails dig into his sore asscheeks, pulling him open as he’s speared onto Johnny’s fingers.

“That’s it.” Johnny says, in english again, voice sounding like it comes out of his throat that is lined with sandpaper. “God, you’re a fucking vision when you take it like that—,”

“Spank me again,” Taeyong bursts out, shoving his face into Johnny's neck again immediately, as if he’s regretting ever letting it slip.

“Fuck—“ Johnny repeats, groaning. No big deal, except he just almost came untouched. “Yeah, _yeah_ , I can do that.”

His fingers spread Taeyong’s entrance even further, shoving as deep as he can go, across Taeyong's prostate. He holds his fingers there, hooking tightly, and lets his palm crack across his ass.

Taeyong’s back arches so far Johnny fears he’ll break. A sinful moan is cried into his damp skin, and his body recoils so greatly he almost slips off of Johnny's fingers as his cock shoves against Johnny’s stomach.  
He runs a hand over the pain immediately after, feeling the skin bloom into heat. Taeyong actually getting off on being spanked is a blessing he never thought would come true. He does it again, once, twice, until his ass is bright red and hot.

Lube and both their precum has got Johnny’s underwear soaked clean through, and he moans helplessly when his hardened cock keeps pushing against Taeyong’s perineum.

Without much grace, Johnny tries to get his boxers off of himself. His attempt to involves lifting a shuddery Taeyong up off his crotch enough he can pull the pesky garment away. He gets it to his knees, kicking it away when it drops low enough to slip over his feet.

“Now, Johnny– _please_ ,” Taeyong begs when Johnny’s cockhead slips against the wet inside of his asscheek. Johnny totally agrees, directing his cockhead to press against Taeyong’s loose hole.  
His other hand holds Taeyong's ass cheek tightly, hesitating, but Taeyong’s determination makes Johnny’s cockhead slip in to the crown, both of them shuddering.

Johnny barely suppresses the urge to just push Taeyong down onto his cock entirely, feel that heat of Taeyong wrapped around his shaft—

He pulls Taeyong off of his front, flipping him around that he catches himself on his hands and knees, Johnny righting himself up behind him. 

He guides his cock to Taeyong’s entrance, shiny with lube and— Johnny decides it’s not enough. He wants Taeyong feeling full enough to burst, filled to the brim, wants him dripping wet down his thighs.   
He bends down to grasp the bottle, pressing a kiss to the fluttering wing of Taeyong’s shoulder blade.

He squeezes more than enough lube onto his cock and smears it against Taeyong’s entrance. He’s already bared as much as can be, but he lets his thumb pull him open even more nonetheless, just because the shameful whimper Taeyong lets out is the exact repayment he wanted.   
He slaps his cockhead into the wet mess of Taeyong’s entrance, letting it dip inside just a little bit, laughing when it punches a shuddery, wet sound out of Taeyong, thighs shaking visibly.

“Please,” Taeyong sobs, trying to send a pleasing gaze over his shoulder. He looks wrecked, shoulders shaking just as much as his watery eyes, and Johnny admits that the teasing is enough. He _could_ make Taeyong wait until he’s a teary mess, make him beg for it over the course of an hour, tell him all the things the wants to do to him when he’s hilt-deep but doesn’t allow Taeyong to move, could just finger him until his thighs don't hold him up anymore and then some– but Johnny is feeling nice right now.

Taeyong’s waist is tiny, he knows that by now, but it doesn’t ever seem to lose the punch it packs to see his hands spanned around the width of it. 

Johnny tightens his fingers above Taeyong’s hips, and pushes forward.

Taeyong’s hands scrabble, voice thinning out in a hiccupy array of pleasured sounds. His eyebrows screw up as Johnny bottoms out, back tensing and hips twitching back up into the sensation. 

“F-fuck,” he rushes out when he’s pressed in all the way.

He’s _tight_. Johnny doesn’t know if he’s a sick fuck, but the sensation of Taeyong’s tiny body trying to accommodate him, his whole body shaking when he’s pressed in to the hilt– it turns him on like nothing else.   
Taeyong is even tighter than he remembered him being, or maybe it’s the weeks they’ve been apart doing their work, but he has to physically stop Taeyong from moving, just so he can get used to the sensation for a moment. Otherwise, he’d come in two minutes flat.

His ears fizzle out of sound for a moment as he pushes forward, into the wet heat of Taeyong’s body. He slips his hands underneath, to the hard buds of Taeyong’s nipples. He drags a finger over the sensitive area, letting his nail catch purposefully. In turn, Taeyong’s body shakes and his head falls down.

“Johnny—“ Taeyong cries, trying to work his hips back onto Johnny’s cock as he begins to start moving in an almost secure tempo.

The term _dancers hips_ pops into Johnny’s brain suddenly, as Taeyong’s back dips in a bow, hand reaching back to pull his own cheek aside. The next thrust has Taeyong’s elbow faltering, body imbalanced, and the dancer tips forward, his shoulder catching onto the mattress. 

One would think it’d be a shame to fuck Taeyong from behind, considering what a loss of visibility of his face it is, but Johnny would disagree. Like this, he can watch the dips atop Taeyong’s asscheek, beside the bottom of his spine, or his shoulder blades winging out as sensations make it impossible to have his poise remain, and the thin of his waist— all of that and more is just as intoxicating to him as Taeyong’s face. 

“Fuck, that gets you going, doesn’t it,” Johnny grunts, hips pushing against Taeyong’s ass.

He pushes the ball of his palm into the dip of Taeyong’s spine, forcing his back to bow even lower. It pushes a choked sound out of Taeyong's lips, a withering cry, throaty and helpless. 

“C’mon, baby,” Johnny murmurs, ruthless in how his thrusts jostle Taeyong’s smaller body. It’s a sick pleasure, to see his lips fall open at the pet name alone, face pulling through his own mess of drool on his pillow. Taeyong will hate him for it the next morning, that Johnny made him even more laundry than necessary, but for now Johnny just revels in it. In the fact that he can push perfect Lee Taeyong, marble statue, manga-visual It-boy, to his limits. To a point where he’s out of his mind, just left begging for Johnny to come inside him. 

He applies more pressure, thumb dragging against Taeyong’s stretched rim. The immediate response is a shake of Taeyong’s thighs, barely holding him up anymore, sliding even wider apart.

Johnny follows Taeyong down to the mattress, catching himself by an elbow somewhere by Taeyong’s face. Pressed against each other from head to toe, it changes the angle of his cock. His thrusts become sloppy, but Taeyong shudders, moaning helplessly when he presses in deeply, as far as he can go. 

“Oh, fuck, _Johnny_ ,” he cries, ass pushing up into the bigger man. He can barely move, caged in by Johnny from above, and it has his eyes rolling into the back of his head. Johnny’s cock is so deep inside of him he knows he’ll feel it for days. “You’re so deep– _ah_ ,” his last words tilt on Johnny thrusting his cock even deeper, like he’s trying to split Taeyong apart, grunting.

“Take it–“ Johnny answers, body as heavy and hot Taeyong feels like he’s burning alive. His hand grabs Taeyong’s hip roughly, pulling his own cock out of the vice of Taeyong’s body; he tilts Taeyong ass up in the little space he has, cockhead slipping on the wet inside of the crux of Taeyong’s thighs. He curses as he still dips in thrust, and his cock pushes along Taeyong’s taint, across his balls. Taeyong’s lids flutter, spine aching in the best possible way, a faint twinge that inflates his arousal times ten. 

“God, you take it so fucking well-“ Johnny grunts, spurring Taeyong on as he buries his cock inside Taeyong again, dragging right across his prostate with every thrust now as he’s got Taeyong’s spine forced into a subtle arch. Taeyong’s cock pushes into the sheet with every thrust Johnny pistons into his body- pulling Taeyong’s hips into each one of them. “So little but it’s like you’re fucking made for taking my cock—“

The heat is almost unbearable, skin feeling so tight to Taeyong he’ll explode soon. He’s _gone_ , and there’s no better way to die than right now. Johnny’s words send the burn of embarrassment down his shoulders, but the sound of his rumbling voice, his words, they’re a fuel to a fire that’s encompassed all of Taeyong. 

It’s only Johnny who does him like this, who’s got him absolutely stupid, unable to conjure up a single thought except how good it feels to be Johnny’s little plaything. _Little_ — that’s enough already. He feels tiny, like Johnny really is splitting him apart, his bicep right in front of his eyes– twice as thick as Taeyong’s own arms. 

He can’t do much but try to wrap a hand around his own cock, wet with lube dripping down from his hole and precum wetting the sheets.

“And you fucking love it, don’t you, baby boy? Crying and drooling on my cock–“

Taeyong's eyes screw shut. “ _Yes_ ,” he cries, cock dripping, making the slick jacking of his wrist even noisier. 

“ _Shit_ —” Johnny's thrusts become sloppy, Taeyong’s body being pushed up with each one of it- fingernails burying in the sheets. “I’m close-“

His hand lets loose of Taeyong’s hip, coming to grasp Taeyong’s cock. Johnny’s hand encompasses Taeyong’s, both wrapped around Taeyong’s cock as he’s almost pushed into the sheets by Johnny’s thrusts. His thighs can barely take the brunt of it, muscles liquid and shaking as Johnny speeds up his cock inside Taeyong’s sloppy hole and their hands on his arousal.

“Jesus, you’re so _wet_ -” he muffles into Taeyong’s neck, and it’s true; noisy sounds accompanying the motion. 

Taeyong’s mouth opens on a silent cry, one dragging inhale of a sob heard. Johnny’s thrusts become almost unbearable, like Taeyong’s really about to break apart, heat unfurling, knot inside his stomach loosening- 

“Wan’ you to come inside,” he can barely speak out, and Johnny moans a broken sound as he pushes as deep as he can go, hotness suddenly spreading, as he pulses inside Taeyong’s vice of a body. His cock shoves deep, Taeyong’s ass pushing back as if he can multiply the feeling- get him even deeper- if that’s even possible—

“ _Ah_ \- ah, oh my god, Johnny—,” Taeyong goes limp, keening highly. He too comes, all over his and Johnny’s hand, as his mind sizzles into a blissful white. 

His ears ring when he returns to inside his body. His hips are still working weakly onto Johnny’s softening cock, whole body shuddering in waves.

Johnny’s hand looks really big, pushed down in the middle, down at Taeyong’s spine. He pushes down, pressing Taeyong into an even deeper arch. Then, he slips out, mind in frayed edges.

“Fuck— as if I’m gonna be able to dance tomorrow,” Taeyong whimpers a complaint, slurred into his pillow.

Johnny laughs, rolling down onto the bed next to Taeyong. He’s got the decency to look a little bashful. “Just stay here. I’ll say you had you back blown out.”

Taeyong can’t help it- Johnny’s so beautiful, face flushed so he looks the best kind of alive, dark hair sticking to his forehead— 

Johnny lets him lick into his mouth with an intimate, intoxicating kind of normalcy. He curls a hand around Taeyong’s jaw, just reciprocationing Taeyong’s messy kind of affection. He hums into the kiss, content and happy sounding like a swarm of bees is inside of his chest.

Taeyong kind of wants to cry, because Johnny just goes with it, as Taeyong pulls himself across Johnny’s body, dirty and sticky. They’re covered in a mess of bodily fluids, and it has Johnny’s wet cock sliding along the mess on the inside of Taeyong’s thigh as he slots his body along Johnny’s. 

He licks into Johnny’s mouth with a weird kind of urgency. He just got screwed three ways till Sunday by the hottest man he knows, but now he’s got a urge to just love on him five ways till Wednesday, show Johnny that he’s really just the best thing that’s ever happened to Taeyong,- and he just doesn’t wanna quit touching him.

A sticky palm wraps around Taeyong’s wrist, pulling it down from cupping Johnny’s face. A shameful recognition rolls down his back when he realizes _why_ Johnny’s hand feels sticky, and that he’s got a hand that was just on his cock a few minutes ago, now in Johnny’s face. 

Johnny doesn’t seem to mind, as their lips part with a wet noise. He only looks at Taeyong like he always does- softly, truly, just shuttered beneath shades of post-sex haze. 

“Five minute shower, and then my bed?” He asks. Johnny’s lips are plush, bitten into a hundredfold saturation of their original color. Sweat reflects on the high points of his face, next to his cattish eyes where his cheekbones are most defined.

Taeyong, brain still kind of melting out of his ears, nods stupidly. 

… 

  
  


“Isn’t that your sweater,” Mark asks, eyes big. His head tilts backward to indicate who, but Johnny doesn't need to look back to know who he’s talking about.

“Yeah,” Johnny says. “What about it?” 

He only realizes how his words sound when Mark pulls his chin in, looking almost as if he’s threatened. “Uh. Nothing, just asking. I was just thinking-”

Taeyong’s gaze crosses his when he lets it sweep back into the back of the van. Johnny winks a little sleazily, put on way too thick, in return, Taeyong throws the wink back. A huge grin splits his face afterward, the one that scrunches up his eyes and apples up his cheeks.

For a second there, Johnny thinks that he feels but Taeyong looks like the happiest boy on the world. 

“Yah, Taeyongie, try not to look too in love,” Doyoung comments, drily. When Johnny throws a gaze back, Taeyong is holding a hand in front of his face, the sharp sound of cussing being heard. Even over his hand, there's a flush to be detected on his face.

“Taeyongie is in love!” Donghyuck yells, from the back of the van. Jungwoo’s face lights up at the mention of anything related to happiness, affection and bromantic loving.

“What?” He asks, puppy-ishly excited. Instead of asking any further, he just takes Taeyong’s hand and shakes it congratulatory. Taeyong is beet red as Jungwoo grasps his hand, and an ugly snort of laughter bursts out of him when the next person Jungwoo congratulates is Doyoung, shaking his unwilling hand vehemently. 

Johnny too, laughs. Mark throws him some kind of look, knowing and questioning at the same time. Johnny is still thinking about what that could even mean, even as they’re filing out of the van at the broadcasting station.

“Wait!” Taeyong calls, a little late from getting out of the back of the van. Mark nods, jogging up to get to Donghyuck, Johnny slowing and turning around. 

Taeyong tugs at the neckline of the giant hoodie he’s wearing, black with a simple slogan on the front. Objectively, it’s nothing special. Subjectively- _well_.

Taeyong does a waddly little jog, holding both his bucket hat and a big sling-over bag. When he’s close, he falls in step with Johnny, a cold hand pushing into the space between arm and ribs. His hand curls around Johnny’s bicep like it’s the most natural thing in the world to do. 

He tips his hat back a little, looking up at Johnny, except now it’s his fringe covering most of his eyes, not the fuzzy material of the fashion accessory. Johnny tilts his own head down, waiting for Taeyong to speak.

Taeyong’s voice is calm, words spoken slowly and clearly. It’s so similar and yet so different from Taeyong’s usual voice, and it has Johnny's brain tunnelling onto the only subject that would deserve such treatment. “Johnny-ah, you already know, don’t you?” 

There's a shake in Johnny’s hands and his hearts beating out of his chest- and at the same time, his mind feels as calm as a lake's surface.

He knows. Somehow, some way, he had always known. It’s never been said, but maybe it doesn't have to. Maybe the actions between words and the actions without any words at all, tell enough to understand something unspoken.

His own behavior had been in the way of understanding for a while. But looking at Taeyong, eyes trusting and big as he looks back into Johnny’s, a hand curled around his bicep, not even looking at the floor, just trusting Johnny to not let them fall- it’s in the way Taeyong is wearing one of Johnny’s worn sweaters. It all spells out something unmistakable.

Johnny knows that he is loved. 

“ _Yeah_ ,” his voice cracks. Taeyong’s eyes crinkle up, mouth curling up in the corners as his head tilts sideways just that much. 

“Yeah, I do.” 

  
—FIN.

**Author's Note:**

> (holds out hands) spare comment puh-lease they make me so happy
> 
> also i just created a twitter so if u want to see me anguish through johnyong crumbs go follow @tyongzu


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